The Ravishing Thrall
by Menolly Mark
Summary: The war's over, but some things don't change. Hermione accidentally stumbles upon Lupin performing illegal hypnotism in a muggle theater, trying to make a living away from antiwerewolf legislation. HGRL....INDEFINITE HIATUs...
1. Art Imitates Life

**Chapter One: Art Imitates Life**

Even the houselights in the theater were far too bright to allow Hermione to focus properly on the paper in her hands. She fumbled irritably with her pen, partially due to that difficulty, but also because she was unused to working with muggle writing implements. Seated seven rows back from the stage, Hermione was all too conscious of the stifling press of people in front of and behind her, all giggling and shouting in anticipation of the start of the show.

It was exactly for that reason, of course, that Hermione had come to this particular theater tonight. She needed to be somewhere that she could find a great many muggles all enjoying a performance together. From in the midst of the audience, she wouldn't have any trouble making innocent and totally unnoticed observations, or taking as many notes as she felt she needed. The dark of the theater and the excitement of the performance would prevent too many people from taking a prolonged interest in Hermione's work.

What was more, everyone in the audience was waiting to see the Great Cambio, a muggle stage performer whose particular skill was hypnotizing members of his audience, and making them do things that later, they never remembered. To Hermione, to be in such a situation seemed horrifying, and she couldn't imagine voluntarily allowing someone to take away control of her mind. That, she recognized, was probably because she was well aware of the dangerous curses used by the Dark Lord and his followers, and knew how precious self-control could be in the face of magic interference.

These eager muggles, on the other hand, saw it as an exhilarating curiosity, a fascinating trick. Cambio himself, no doubt, used all sorts of little party tricks to convince his audience that he was, in fact, hypnotizing them. She'd read volumes upon volumes of work by wizards who had done extensive research into what it was that stage magicians did to seem magical, when they had no more wizarding talent any of their rapt observers. What Hermione cared less about the tricks used, than about the reactions produced in the audience. She needed to understand those reactions for her book, a dauntingly extensive treatise on wizard/muggle relations entitled Muggles and Magic – What is the Appeal? When she finished this book, she kept assuring herself, she'd have better luck than she'd had the last time. This time, it would sell so many copies that she'd find it on the Hogwarts reading list before a year was up.

"The Great Cambio – Saturday, January the 6th," Hermione wrote with her clumsy pen, before slipping the parchment into her pocket and turning her eyes to the stage. Even as she did so, the houselights finally began to dim, and an ecstatic murmur arose from the surrounding rows of audience members. A few irate voices rose above the rest, shushing them peremptorily, until the audience quieted down, and an expectant silence settled over the theater.

Hermione leaned forward against the back of the seat in front of her, trying see over the head of the tall woman in the front row. A man was walking on to the stage, a tall, slim shadow against the backdrop of a multitude of lighting units and purple banners.

Hermioen was surprised by the flashes or musical trills that accompanied the man to the stage. In her experience, muggle magic shows were almost always characterized by some sort of vibrant display of pyrotechnics, supposedly displays of the power of the magician in question. The Great Cambio, however, for this was no doubt he, chose to cross the stage with nothing to accompany him but the sound of his own booted feet tapping against the wood paneling of the stage floor.

A spotlight blinked on above him, and the audience was able to see Cambio's face for the first time. The woman in the first row was still totally obscuring Hermione's view of the finer details, and, frustrated, Hermione curled her legs under her on the seat, so that she could gain an extra couple of inches. That added height wasn't quite enough, and, with a mutter of exasperation, Hermione slipped from her seat, and stepped out into the aisle. Although she hardly needed to see the man to judge what the reactions of the audience were, she wanted to at least know what he looked like, if only for her own amusement.

Cambio was speaking, now, in a low, gentle voice, one long-fingered hand held out in front of him as if inviting the audience to join him. "You've come here today," he was saying, "to lose your minds. After all, that's what it is, to let someone else take control of your actions. It's like losing your mind."

Finally, Hermione found a good place in the center of the aisle to stand, without obscuring anyone else's view. As soon as her line of sight was clear, her shock at what she saw temporarily prevented her from hearing what the magician was saying. She couldn't possibly be seeing what she thought she was seeing…could she?

The Great Cambio was not a powerful looking man. He was long and lean, with a gaunt face, obscured by falling locks of thin, tawny hair, which was shot through with the silver of age. His outstretched hands were bony, seemingly almost feeble, and though his purple and blue coat and trousers were ludicrously fine, he still gave off the appearance of shabby destitution. His face, from what Hermione could see of it, was lined and creased with age and worry, and his eyes were dull and grey, as he stared anywhere but into any individual face.

Even after three years of having heard no word of the man, Hermione could recognize him anywhere. He'd taught at Hogwarts when she'd been a third year student, and he'd earned the highest orders of Merlin in the course of the great war against the Death Eaters. Then he'd disappeared entirely from Hermione's world, and, subsequently, from her mind. Remus J. Lupin, however, was a distinctive man, too distinctive for Hermione to be mistaken, even in this totally unexpected setting.

"I'm going to need a volunteer," he was telling the rapt crowd. "Would anyone like to step up to the stage for me?" Lupin paused as the audience members talked excitedly amongst themselves. He stood patiently in the center of the stage, leaning slightly against a large post in the center that seemed to be holding up the ceiling, or at least was supposed to give that impression. After several moments, a short, wiry man with very curly blond hair made his way through the aisle, to stand in front of the stage, assisted by a woman, who was pushing at him insistently. Nodding, Lupin indicated that the small man should climb up and join him on the stage.  
"I should ask you, sir," he started, still in that quiet, unobtrusive voice, "whether or not you have any dark secrets that you'd rather not have revealed in front of all of this people?"

The man looked around at all of the faces in the crowd, smiling nervously. "Everybody has secrets, right?"

"Of course they do," Lupin reassured him. "I only ask because you're about to give me permission to tell everyone else yours."

Laughing, the man shook his head. "No chance of that," he insisted, emphatically. "No matter what you do to me, I'm gonna keep my head. Gotta prove that this is just a trick, after all."

Lupin raised an eyebrow at him. "Sleep," he murmured, passing a hand over the man's head. "Sleep, now. Sleep…"

His voice caressed the surrounding silence as he repeated the word "sleep," over and over again. The man onstage with him looked confused at first, and then, abruptly, he closed his eyes and swayed dangerously backward on the stage. The crowd gasped. Before the man could fall, however, Hermione saw Lupin's lips move, murmuring an inaudible charm. At the same moment, a tiny flash, like infinitesimal lightning shot out of somewhere in the vicinity of Lupin's coat pocket.

The audience gave a series of collective gasps and cries of surprise. Carefully, Lupin laid the now completely unconscious man down on the stage floor, pillowing the man's head on one of Lupin's own hands. He bent close to the man's ear, and whispered something else. This time, Hermione thought she heard him murmur "mobilis," at the end of the spell. The man's body stood straight up, but his eyes were still closed, and it was apparent that he was out cold.

Hermione was horrified. She couldn't bee sure what exactly she was watching, but she did know that Remus Lupin was breaking just about every muggle/wizard relations law in the Ministry books. Not only was he using genuine magical powers to masquerade as a fraudulent muggle sideshow act, but he was manipulating other muggles, using magic tricks that, at least to Hermione, looked like the wrong and most dangerous kind. She wondered if she should say something, enter the fray and stop the show. But that, of course, was a stupid idea. If Hermione intervened, she'd only increase the problem, and make sure that all of the muggles knew that there was something strange, and potentially genuinely magical going on.

Gritting her teeth, Hermione kept watching, rapt despite herself as Lupin put one arm on the shoulder of the sleep-walking man. "You were just telling me," Lupin was murmuring, "that you weren't going to let me reveal all of your secrets, weren't you, sir?" The man, quite expectedly, made no response. "Well," the wizard continued, conversationally, "what would you say now, if I asked you tell me what it is that you were so keen to keep me from finding out?"

The man's hand shot up, and he pointed vaguely at someone in the audience. He opened his mouth, and, in a low, distracted drone began to speak. "I," he was saying "didn't-!"

"Stop!" commanded Lupin quickly, and the man's hand dropped again to his side as he shut his mouth obediently. "Well,"Lupin chuckled, "I suppose that answers that question. Don't worry, that's all the proof I need."

The show progressed in much that way for a full three-quarters of an hour. Hermione was so distracted by her amazement and chagrin at identifying Remus Lupin, that she was almost unable to make any helpful observations about the way that her neighbors in the audience were responding to Lupin's skillfully executed "tricks." He went on to make the man emit several uncannily accurate animal noises, and played some games with him that involved running in circles and doing acrobatics that a man of his stature didn't seem otherwise capable of.

At long last, Lupin grasped the man by both shoulders, and looked into his still tightly closed eyes. "Awake," he said, "You're done." Hermione saw the wand flash again, and, as Lupin released his volunteer, the man's eyes shot open, and he tumbled, with a startled squeak, on to his backside on the floor. He blinked up at Lupin

"Wow," said the man, clearly impressed. "Did I…did I say anything?"

Lupin smiled. "I'm sure your friends will let you know. You're free to go now."

As the man hopped down from the stage, and made his way into the audience, there was a short, lulling silence. The volunteer took his seat, and Lupin smiled benevolently into the crowd, as if to say "Well?"

Applause erupted from the theater, and Hermione struggled to her feet as the people around her stood up to cheer for the still-smiling hypnotist.

Remus Lupin made a demure but gallant bow. Hermione gritted her teeth, and gathered her parchment and pen into her handbag as the lights in the theater flooded back on.

* * *

"Excuse me," Hermione kept repeating, as she shoved her way through the throng of happily chattering muggles who were exiting the theater. "Excuse me, ah…can someone help me, please? I need some directions."

One of the red-clad ushers turned a curious eye towards her. "Miss?"

Hermione made her way over to him, fighting against the flow of human traffic." Yes," she started, thinking as quickly as she could on her feet. "You probably haven't seen me before, but I'm a friend of the Great Cambio's. Ah…I'm his sister, actually. Sister's…daughter. I'm his niece."

"Yeah?" The usher raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yes," agreed Hermione, willing herself to sound genuinely convincing. "Spending the week in town with my friends, and I thought I'd come say hello. Does he have a dressing room back here?"

The look on the usher's face said very plainly that Hermione hadn't been as convincing as she'd hoped. "He does," he agreed, "but I'm not supposed to let anybody back there. No special treatment for anybody, you see. Otherwise everyone would start claiming to be related to the performers." They probably would, Hermione thought to herself. She should have known that trick wouldn't' work particularly well.

As she wracked her brains for a sufficiently beguiling response, the stage doors opened behind her, and both she and the usher turned around to look at them. Remus Lupin, still wearing his ridiculous blue cape, was stepping through towards them. He turned around and closed the doors behind him, before he approached them, and acknowledged Hermione. She couldn't tell exactly what his reaction to her was, as his face didn't' change when his eyes met hers. He nodded slightly, and said, over his shoulder to the usher, "It's all right, Kyle. She's a friend of the family." Giving Hermione a very slight smile, he gestured to a door next to that of the women's bathroom. "This way, Hermione, if you will."


	2. Faith

**Chapter Two: Faith**

Lupin/Cambio's dressing room was as unimpressive as his person. The brightest thing in the room was his cape, and Hermione was glad when he took it off and deposited it disdainfully in a corner. He'd lost the air of quiet magnificence that he had cultivated on the stage, and he was more the old Lupin that she knew, slightly slouched, with unsettled, roving eyes and a very weary sort of curve to his smile. He wasn't an old man, and yet by looking, you couldn't' tell how young he really was.

Pulling out a tattered, indescribably brown stool from under a similarly-colored coffee table, Lupin gestured for Hermione to take it. She seated herself, and he folded his frame into a nearby armchair, gazing at her curiously, with a combination of resignation and wariness that made her uncomfortable. "Well?" he asked, although there was no malice to the challenge. "Have you come to arrest me?"

"No, of course not," Hermione started, but, even as she spoke, she remembered the way his lips had moved as he'd raised the unconscious form of the volunteer from the ground. She frowned, and shook her head. "I…I didn't' _come_ to arrest you," he tried a second time, "But I…that is, I just don't' know what to say." She shook he head, holding out her hands in an expression of confusion. "I couldn't' possibly have known that I'd see you here…"

"If you weren't looking for me," Lupin murmured skeptically, "then what were you doing in the theater?"

"I was only seeing the show," she told him. Lupin looked unconvinced. "I was," Hermione reassured him, "because I had to, o get information for my book." Belatedly, she remembered the parchment in her handbag, and pulled it out, offering it to him. "It's on muggle/magic relations," she insisted, pointing at the notes where she'd begun to discuss him and his act. "That's why I came."

Lupin nodded encouragingly. "Should have thought it was something like that," he said, and he flashed her the closest thing to a full-fledged grin that she'd seen from him so far. "You're quite an expert now on all sorts of muggle issues. I read your last book when Flourish and Blotts did the special on you. A well-researched piece of literature. I would say that I was impressed, but, to tell you the truth, I couldn't' have expected any less of you."

Hermione started, surprised that he'd read the book. She certainly hadn't heard anyone else mention her previous, almost unheard-of attempt to describe the relationships between muggles and mythological creatures. An unwelcome blush rose to her cheeks at the sound of the praise for her work, and Hermione coughed, glancing down at the stool.

"So?" Lupin asked with a sigh, "What are we going to do now?"

"Do?" Hermione hated how stupid she sounded to herself.

"Yes," clarified Lupin, "What are we going to do, now that you've surprised my secret, and cornered me so effectively? I don't' suppose I'm going to get off with a good stern talking to." He sounded amused, although Hermione hardly thought of this as a laughing matter. Tearing her mind away from his compliments, she shook her head at him, remembering the transgressions she'd just witnessed. "Well," Lupin pressed her, "Let's have the worst of it."

"What'd you to him?" Hermione asked, standing up, both to give weight to her words, and so she wouldn't' have to sit there looking into Lupin's patiently smiling face. "To that man, when you…when you 'hypnotized' him, what did you really do to him? I know it wasn't a trick, I know you cast something on him, but I couldn't tell what it was."

"What do you think I did to him?" Lupin responded, infuriatingly.

"If I knew that," Hermione shot back, "I wouldn't have asked you. And trust me, Professor, if I did know, then I'd know exactly how to deal with it. I do have my suspicions."

There was something odd, Hermione realized even as she spoke, about her both chastising Lupin, and referring to him as "Professor" in the same sentence. She'd never quite managed to shake the fact that he had not only been her teacher, but one of the best teachers that she'd ever had at Hogwarts. That had been years ago, but there was something so unobtrusively professional about the man that she kept using the title despite herself.

"I imagine that, no matter what you think, what I did wasn't quite so bad," Lupin replied.

Hermione wouldn't be put off. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to ask the question that had been lurking at the back of her mind since she'd seen the stunt. "You didn't…you didn't imperius him, did you?"

Remus gave her a very long, very surprised look. Then he dissolved into silent laughter. Watching him, Hermione felt the color rising in her face for the second time. This wasn't a laughing matter, she thought, this was really serious. Why, if wizards went around using unforgivable curses on muggle subjects just for fun…wizards who were supposed to be champions of the good and just. "It's not funny," she told him, "it's not funny at all! You, of all people, should know that it's absolutely not permissible to-!"

Remus held up a hand to her, cutting her off as he tried to stifle his laughter. "I assure you, Hermione," he said, "that I did not, and never would use the imperius curse." He took a deep breath, and finally regained some of his composure. "I can't decide if you're giving me a lot of credit for being able to use it so discreetly, or giving me too little credit for making the totally unfounded assumption that I'd ever use it. No," he continued, "no, I only put a sleepwalking spell on him. He was out cold, and I just suggested things to him. We had a good night tonight. Half of the time, the subject won't do what I ask them to, because they're too confused and unconscious to figure out what's going on. It doesn't really matter, though, as the audience loves when I get things wrong, because it means they're more powerful than," and the quality of his voice changed slightly, "the Great Cambio." His smile was half grimace, now.

Hermione couldn't help being relieved. She hadn't wanted to believe that Lupin was capable of an unforgivable curse, and she was incredibly pleased to hear that he hadn't done it after all. The sensation, however, was short lived. "That doesn't change the fact," she continued, "that you've deliberately broken one of the most binding of the laws! We are never, under any circumstances, permitted to-!"

"I am aware, Hermione, of the terms of the law," murmured Lupin. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but, apparently thought better of it. Instead, he got to his feet, and gave the open window a furtive glance, before crossing to a small chest of drawers on the opposite side of the room. "Forgive me, Hermione," he said, and reached into the bottom drawer to pull out a small teacup and a packet. He opened the packet, dumping the contents into the teacup. A good deal of greenish powder tumbled into the cup, and Lupin waved his wand at it, so that the glittering green powder became a slimy green liquid. "I've started to make this instant stuff," he added. "It's not quite as lasting as the potion I used to take, but that takes much longer to make, and if I take this before the fact, I don't' eat anyone when the moon rises."

Hermione watched Lupin swallow the unpleasant looking concoction. "What do you do," she asked, "when you have a show on the night of a full moon?"

Lupin shook his head. " I don't," he said simply, replacing the cup. "Tea? I have some regular tea, for those of us who aren't werewolves."

"No, thank you," Hermione said, shaking her head. "None for me."

"We've all got to eat, Hermione," Lupin told her, responding to a comment that she hadn't yet made. "Illegal or not, the muggles don't' understand what a werewolf is, so they can't be afraid of me. To them, it's all a trick, and they couldn't possibly suspect me of anything. I'll take my chances with the law, if it gives me the opportunity to stay living on my own terms. If I could find another way to live, I would."

He selected a different teacup, and poured himself a much more appealing drink from a teapot that had apparently also been hiding in the chest. As he sipped at it complacently, watching the sky through the nearby window, Hermione suddenly had an inkling of what might be going on. She regarded Lupin steadily, unsure how much she wanted to rely on the green powder to protect her from the ravaging of an angry werewolf. Other people would feel the same way, she knew. Other people who didn't know Lupin personally wouldn't feel nearly as safe as even she did sitting in the same room with him, watching him drink tea as if the moon wasn't about to rise through the clouds and shatter their peace.

"You probably ought to go," Lupin was saying, his drowsy eyes mournful as he waved a hand at the window. "It's a little bit disturbing when it happens; for all that I promise I won't snack on you."

Perversely, Hermione didn't want to leave him in this state. "It's fine," she said. "I used to see Professor McGonagall transform all the time, and I've watched Sirius…" she bit her lip, regretting that reference. Still, there was nothing for it now. "I've watched Sirius," she continued determinedly, "change as well. It can't be anything too surprising."

Lupin said nothing, but he straightened up a bit in his chair, and Hermione got the sense that he appreciated the faith.

* * *

For all of her brave words, she was still apprehensive when the moon broke through the cloud cover. Lupin's back arched, and thick, brown hair started to break out on his thin arms. A spasm of pain crossed his face, and he shot a look at Hermione. Aware that she was under scrutiny, Hermione stayed put, and pretended to be too busy reading over her parchment of notes to have noticed the change. She read the same line over and over again, unable to stop herself from tensing in her chair as Lupin let out a strangled yelp of pain. 

When she finally allowed herself to look at him again, he was all wolf, curled up awkwardly on his hind legs in the chair. His eyes still contained that deeply gloomy expression that the human Lupin had worn. Hermione carefully schooled her expression into one of disinterested patience, and took out her pen to scribble in the margins of her parchment.

Time passed slowly. At first, Hermione felt incredibly awkward, just sitting there across from the melancholy, transformed Lupin. She was unwilling to speak, and he was unable. The uncomfortable atmospheric tint kept building, until Hermione, unable to bear it, stood up, and began to pace the room. "Do you have any spare parchment, Professor?" she asked, gesturing helplessly at the sheet in her hands, covered completely with writing. "I need to start another sheet."

She wasn't sure at first if wolf-Lupin had understood her. After a moment, however, he flicked his tail at the chest of drawers from which he'd originally pulled the tea set. Hermione walked over to it, and reached in to find several sheets of fine parchment in the top drawer. "Thank you."

She settled herself back on to the stool, and perched the sheets on her knee, placing the already finished notes on the floor just to the left of her feet. "I think you must be the only person who has ever read my books, Professor," she said, as she started to translate her hastily scribbled notes into turgidly flowing sentences on the clean sheet. "And maybe you're the only person who ever will. I'm not even sure if I still have a copy of it myself, to tell you the truth. I guess every writer starts out wit a failure. At least, I hope so." She paused, frowning, trying to think of how to translate "the excited reactions of the muggles" into a better, fuller sentence. "What's a synonym for 'excited?'  
Lupin, not unexpectedly, regarded her with what she almost thought must be an expression of wolfish exasperation.

"Oh yes," Hermione realized, smiling as the revelation hit her. "Exuberant! Does that work? 'The exuberance of the muggle onlookers filled the whole theater with a sense of rapt anticipation.' How's that for a starting sentence?"

Lupin tilted his head to one side.

"You approve?" She waited. "Yes, you do approve. I think." Hermione jotted the newly-formulated phrase down, and then moved on to the next note.

She got so caught up, in fact, in her writings, that after a while she stopped minding that the only reaction she could evoke from Lupin was a vague facial expression, or an inscrutable tilt of the head. He, in turn, seemed perfectly comfortable listening to her vibrant monologue, despite his inability to conclusively express his opinion. Time stopped crawling and started to overtake itself, so that Hermione completely lost track of it.

"Hermione?" Lupin's voice interrupted her, pulling her out of her reverie as she frowned down at the page before her. She looked up, and saw that he was a man again, looking even more tired than he had before, but with a surprised half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Oh goodness," she murmured, glancing down to see that what had been one sheet of notes seemed to have multiplied, and that now ten or eleven pieces of parchment were stretched out before her on the floor.

"Just for the record," Lupin said, frowning a bit in concentration, "I don't think that 'onlookers' is quite the most effective word.

Hermione blinked. "Spectator?"

Lupin shook his head.


	3. In the Still of the Night

**Chapter Three: In the Still of the Night**

Hermione returned home long into the early hours of the morning, and she was quite happy to jump right into bed. Apparently, however, a sound sleep was not in the cards for her tonight. About an hour after she'd drifted off, Hermione awoke abruptly, startled to hear a "pop" that echoed unpleasantly around the empty bedroom. She sat up, fumbling with one hand to grab her wand off of the bedside table, and blinking blearily through the misty fog of sleepiness that still hung about her.

"Hermione?" A voice murmured, hesitantly. Hermione relaxed. Harry Potter, as bleary-eyed and tousled-looking as herself, was standing next to her bedroom fireplace. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and waved her wand at the ceiling, whispering "lumos!" The welcoming smile that had started to come to her face when she heard Harry's voice faded quickly, as she noticed the expression on her childhood friend's face.

"Hi," Harry said, looking very awkward. "I um. I'm sorry, I woke you up."

Hermione looked at the clock. It was five o'clock in the morning. Of course he'd woken her up, she thought. Had he expected that she'd be awake at this hour? "It's fine," she said, rather than voice those thoughts. "Not a problem. What's up, Harry? You're…well, you're white as a sheet, and you don't look like you've slept tonight either."

This was perfectly true. Now that he was in the light, Hermione could see that his face was several shades paler than it normally was, and that there were large, dark bags under his eyes. "Yeah, well," Harry was saying, looking slightly uncomfortable, "I've had…a rough week."

"Where's Ginny?" asked Hermione, shaking her head reprovingly at him. "Does she know you're out in the middle of the night, when you're obviously in no shape to be anywhere but in your bed?"

"I dunno," Harry replied, bleakly. "I sort of thought that she was with you."

"With me?" Hermione stared at him. "No, of course she's not with me, what would Ginny be doing with me?"

"Girl's night out, or something," Harry muttered, quickly adding "I guess," in what he apparently thought was a nonchalant manner.

For a moment, Hermione was terrified. If Ginny was missing, something might have happened to her. She could be anywhere. They should be making calls, searching their favorite haunts. Hermione stepped forward, making as if to reach for some floo powder from a small jar above the fireplace. Harry didn't follow, and Hermione glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow in some surprise. Then, she remembered. They weren't in the middle of a war, anymore. Those days were over. Ginny was missing, not kidnapped. "Oh," she said, in a very small voice. "Oh, no, Harry, I'm sure she's just…"

"Was she here the other night, then?" he interrupted, refusing to look Hermione in the eye. "On Wednesday?"

"I haven't seen Ginny in weeks," she insisted, hating herself for it. "She must have meant she was going to see someone else…"

"Yeah," agreed Harry bitterly. "Yeah, I expect she must have."

"Oh, but, no, that's not what I meant…" Hermione trailed off, recognizing how useless her assurances were, as she saw the closed, blank look in Harry's eyes. Almost idly, she wondered how long Ginny had been telling her husband that she'd been spending 'girl's nights' with Hermione, and why it was that Harry had believed her. Surely he'd known that Hermione would hardly have invited Ginny over night after night, and never so much as asked for him.

"Nevermind," he muttered, running a nervous hand through his hair as he turned back to the fireplace. "Just forget it. I'll…let you sleep, now. G'night."

"Harry." Hermione put a hand on his shoulder, forestalling him. "Don't go like that. Sit down for a minute and we'll figure out where she is. You don't look like you're in a state to travel, anyway."

Harry allowed Hermione to push him into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He still wasn't looking at her, but was instead staring intently at the opposite wall, so intently that Hermione thought he might bore a hole through it with sheer force of thought. He didn't move, and he didn't speak for so long that Hermione was temporarily convinced that he'd gone to sleep with his eyes open, the way her father had used to do. She left him there, and continued to the fireplace, taking a pinch of floo powder, and tossing it into the fire.

Harry's voice forestalled her. "No, please" She turned to see him, hardly asleep, shaking his head and holding out a hand in a gesture of protestation. "Don't ask anyone. I don't want it noised about everywhere. If she doesn't want to come home, she doesn't want to." He shrugged, as if that was that.

Hermione stared at him, unconvinced. "And…you're not going to do anything? You're just going to let her run around on you, and act as if you don't' know anything about it?"

"I dunno," retorted Harry, although he sounded more resigned than confident about it. "You got a better idea?"

Hermione didn't, so she said nothing. Staring at Harry's dreary, dejected face, feeling helpless, and angrier than she'd ever been at Ginny Weasley. She and Ginny had been fast friends, when they'd lived together at the Burrow, and when they'd been students at Hogwarts. Ginny was a very pretty girl, with one of those laughs that turned men's heads wherever she was…and women's heads, too, now that Hermione came to think about it. That had all been well and good at Hogwarts, and even for a few months after Harry and she had been married. To be completely honest, Hermione reminded herself, she hadn't expected anything like this to happen. Maybe she was really out working extra hard at night to…buy Harry an extra-special Christmas present?

She looked over at Harry, and, instinctively, put her head on his shoulder, giving him a one-armed hug. Harry didn't object, but continued to just sit there. "Thanks, Hermione," he mumbled.

* * *

"Here's a thought," Hermione said, as she conjured up a batch of cheese-drizzled scrambled eggs an hour or so later. "There's something I forgot to tell you. You'll never believe who I ran into last night."

Harry was sitting at the kitchen table, still having gotten no sleep, but looking a bit less morose. He sipped at a glass of orange juice that Hermione had forced in front of him, and made a concerted, although unsuccessful effort at sounding really interested. "Yeah? Who's that?"

"You have to guess." Hermione grinned at him.  
Harry rolled his eyes. "Come off it, who'd you meet?"

"Remus Lupin," replied Hermione, deflating somewhat. He clearly still wasn't in the mood.

That announcement, however, had a very strange effect on Harry. He acted for a few minutes as if he hadn't even heard the information, still sipping stupidly at his juice. Then, all of a sudden, he gazed up at Hermione, his eyes widening as if opening in slow-motion. "Remus Lupin? _The_ Remus Lupin?"

"I don't expect there are any other Remus Lupin's that I'd be so keen to tell you about," shot Hermione. She brought the plate of eggs over to the table, along with a second dish for Harry, and a pair of forks. "Eat, you have no color."

Harry wasn't interested in the food. "Well," he asked, grabbing her forearm across the table in his excitement, "where is he? What's he up to, how'd you run into him? How's he doing, is he all right? Did he ask for me?"

"Slow down!" Hermione smiled, pleased to see that she'd had such an effect on Harry, who was no longer acting like a decorative stone gargoyle. "It's a long story. And…" she bit her lip. "And come to think of it, I definitely shouldn't be talking about it."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "What, shouldn't be talking about it?" He jabbed a finger at his own chest. "To me? Have we met, Hermione? I'm Harry Potter, your best friend from school. We fought Lord Voldemort together. Oh, and you were the maid of honor at my wedding." His face fell as he thought about his wedding, and Ginny.

Hermione spoke hastily, hoping to return Harry's mind to the idea of finding Lupin. "Of course," promised him, "of course it's different, but…well…we shouldn't talk about it anywhere else, all right? He's not in a good position, if you will."

"A good position?" asked Harry. "Well go on, don't be enigmatic, tell me where he is!"

Hermione gestured at the food in front of her friend. "I won't speak a word until you've eaten some of your eggs. Lupin isn't going anywhere in the next ten minutes, I shouldn't think.

Harry ate his eggs, so quickly that Hermione was frightened that he'd choke in his hurry to get them down and out of the way. When he was halfway through with them, and didn't show any signs of slowing his pace, Hermione reached forward and ripped the plate out from under him. "All right, all right," she accepted, shaking her head "don't kill yourself, I'll tell you!"

So she did tell him. Hermione explained what she'd been doing at the theater, and described the totally unexpected appearance of Remus Lupin, posing as a muggle stage hypnotist. When Harry didn't appear satisfied by her explanation, she went on to describe some of the tricks that he'd used. "And," she added, "he promised me that it wasn't the imperius curse, but it was certainly a good imitation of it!"

Harry was nodding, slowly. "I imagine that not everyone would believe his explanation, if they saw him manipulating a muggle like that. Maybe they wouldn't be so quick to agree with you that it wasn't an unforgiveable curse."

"Doesn't matter," Hermione said with a shrug. "Potentially exposing the magical community, and practicing magic, any magic either on or with muggles is a criminal offense! A really serious criminal offense…but, you should know that already."

Harry grimaced. He knew it all too well. "What's he up to there, then? Gotta be something we're not seeing, like…some sort of ulterior motive. Maybe he's really working for the Ministry, you just don't know it. Scouting out some troublemakers, or-!"

He trailed off at the sight of the look on Hermione's face. "He can't get employed anywhere else," she said simply. "No place for werewolves."

"Even now?" Harry asked. "But he's a war hero, he's helped to save most of our lives! Surely they'll make exceptions."

"No exceptions," murmured Hermione glumly.

Thoughtfully, Harry reached over and retrieved his eggs. He kept eating them, but much more slowly, obviously turning something over in his head as he munched. Hermione made a plate for herself, and joined him. She recognized that thoughtful, eager look on his face, and she wasn't entirely sure she liked it. She also, however, wasn't entirely sure that she didn't like it, and part of her wanted very much to see that fire back in his eyes that she'd been used to in the days before the war.

"I want to see him," Harry said, after a while. "Will you take me there, Hermione?"

"Absolutely not," retorted Hermione, applying herself to her eggs. "It's not a good idea, and the more attention that we draw to him, the less good we'll do him. You know it."

Harry begged her with big, hopeful green eyes. Hermione sighed.


	4. Remember Me

**Chapter Four: Remember Me**

Hermione wanted to insist on spending the rest of the day writing. As she'd only gotten a little bit done the night before, she felt like she didn't have the time to devote to another all-night excursion. Harry was so eager to go, however, and so effectively distracted from his worries over Ginny that she relented, not feeling herself quite capable of dashing the hopes that she'd bred.

She did insist that both of them shower and clean up, as she hadn't changed her clothes since her trip to the theater the day before, and Harry was still covered in soot from the fireplace. She didn't have any clothes to lend him, but she did smooth the creases in his trousers with a quick mutter of "derigus," and a wave of her wand.

Clean, and slightly less disheveled looking, Harry looked a lot better. She wished she could do something about the incriminating circles under his eyes, but there was nothing for that save genuine sleep. "All right," she said, giving her friend an appraising look. "You don't like quite so much like a disgrace to the name of wizards, now. Are you sure you don't want to stop home first, see if Ginny's back?"

Harry's face set into a hard expression, and Hermione wished she hadn't asked.

She was, however, glad that she had Harry to travel with, since he was as used to she was to moving from place to place by muggle means. They took a cab again, both of them keeping pointedly silent throughout the ride, avoiding accidentally mentioning anything that might give them away.

The ride seemed to take forever, probably because of that anxious silence. Finally, they pulled up outside the theater, and Harry jumped out without giving so much as a backward glance to the cab. Hermione paid the driver as Harry ran up to the doors of the building, and he gave her a sheepish look when she waved a small purse of gold at him. "Next time, you're going to pay." Harry didn't seem to have any objections to that.

She hadn't counted on being recognized by the usher when she came in, having assumed that the workers changed every night. Her heart skipped a beat as the man turned, peered at her, and then gave her a slow, unsure smile.

"Oh yeah," he said, "Yeah, you're the niece, right? You were here last night."

"That's right," agreed Hermione quickly, ignoring Harry's startled look.

"Just can't stay away, can you?" the usher grinned. "Yeah, well, I assume you're here to see him, not to see the show. You can just go around, he's dressing. Don't stay long, we want to start on time."

Hermione blinked. "Oh! Well, ah…thank you." Gesturing at Harry, she added, "this is my, ah…husband. Is it all right if he-!"

The usher waved them in, returning his attention to the stream of people who were arriving early to the show. "Sure, sure," he said, "whatever's best." To a woman standing by him, holding out her credit card, he said, "Welcome, welcome, come to see some magic done?"

Hermione took Harry by the arm, and hurried him around back to the door next to the women's bathroom. He was laughing under his breath as they came to a stop outside the dressing room door. "Your husband, Hermione? I mean, I guess that makes more sense that me being your brother…"

Hermione glared at him. "Shut up." She gave the door a sharp rap. "Prof-Ah…Mr. Cambio, sir? I've brought someone to see you…if you've got a moment."

There was a short pause before the door opened, revealing Lupin, already dressed in his ridiculous muggle wizard costume. He smiled when he saw Hermione, looking sincerely pleased to see her. "Back again, Hermione?" he asked, his eyes twinkling at her. "Unless you've changed your mind, and come back to arrest me?"

It was then that he noticed that there was somebody else behind her. His confident smile flagging, Lupin gave Hermione a startled, accusatory look. She shook her head, reaching back with one hand to drag Harry forward.

Harry and Lupin stared at each other, and the door of the dressing room smacked Lupin sharply in the back, as he released it in his surprise, letting it close behind him and shove him out into the hall. He cleared his throat, apparently attempting to think of something to say, his eyes never leaving Harry's. Harry ruffled a hand through his hair.  
"Hi, Remus," he said. "You look…you look good."

"You look terrible," replied Lupin, smiling, but with a hoarse note in his voice, that sounded a good deal like he was stifling emotion.

"Yeah, well…" Harry shrugged, and looked towards Hermione, as if expecting her to say something.

"It's been…a long week," she murmured, echoing what Harry had said the previous night.

Lupin chuckled. "That makes three of us," he agreed. "But it's good to see you." Then, apparently casting off his indecision, he strode forward, and gave Harry a fierce bear-hug, clapping him on the back with one hand. "Really good to see you."

Hermione felt herself to be a very awkward spectator, and had started to turn away to head for the women's bathroom, when Lupin's voice stopped her. "Thank you, Hermione," he was saying, as he released Harry. "I couldn't have come to seek him out myself, not without having people asking questions about where I've been, and what I've been doing with myself. I really didn't think I was going to see either of you again. My goodness, Harry," he added, giving him a wide, incredulous smile, "you've grown again. I didn't expect that would happen at your age. You're taller than James was, and…yes, you're taller than me."

"Not quite," muttered Harry. "We're about the same height, really."

Lupin didn't seem to notice the correction. He gazed at Harry for a few more moments, looking as though he had more to say, but seemed, all of a sudden to become aware of the passage of time. With a warm smile for both Harry and Hermione in turn, he straightened the blue cape about his shoulders, and then sped away to the backstage doors. Hermione saw Harry watching him go, a look of regret on her friend's face.

"It's all right," she said, guessing what was making him so concerned. "I'm sure you'll have a chance to talk to him after the show. Shall we go and watch?"  
Harry shook his head emphatically. "No," he said, "No, I don't think I want to…see him like that. Don't want to watch him stoop to that."

Hermione understood exactly what he meant, but, if they weren't going to go and watch, they were going to have a very long wait. She reached over and tested the door handle. It was open. Smiling at Lupin's thoughtfulness, or his forgetfulness as she wasn't sure which it had been, she gestured for Harry to follow her into the office. "We'll wait in here," she said. "I doubt he'll mind." As they closed the door behind him, she frowned, her eyes running over the walls of the office, covered entirely in stationary, muggle photographs. "What I can't understand," she continued thoughtfully, "is why we haven't heard anything of him in three years? Surely it's impossible to hide effectively in such a public place. We can't be the first wizards to find him out."

"We must be. After all, you said it yourself, he's broken a law, and there's no getting around that. He wouldn't still be here if anyone had found him."

"I suppose," Hermione admitted. "Still, it's an awfully strange coincidence."

Harry settled himself on to the same stool that Hermione had used the night before. "I'm not complaining," he said. "We'll have to convince him to back with us, though. Otherwise he might not have the same luck in the future. If no one's found him yet, they're bound to find him soon. After all, we did."

Hermione thought that convincing Lupin to come away from the theater and return to the wizarding community might not be so easy. After all, she knew, although he'd probably receive a lot deal of curiosity and publicity after a three year absence, that wouldn't necessarily help him be more readily accepted. She couldn't personally imagine spending the rest of her life in muggle society, now that she'd been a witch for so long, and yet she could somewhat understand what Lupin must be going through.

"We'll need to have a serious chat with him," Harry was saying, unaware of Hermione's own misgivings. "I wonder, Hermione…could he stay with you, just until we've found him a more convenient home?"

"Professor Lupin isn't a recalcitrant pet, Harry," she admonished. "Besides, no one's yet asked him if he wants to leave with us."

Before Harry could open his mouth to respond to that, the man in question stepped through the office door. "Oh good," he said, smiling, and wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "I was hoping you'd be willing to wait for me."

Lupin drew off his cape, and draped it over the back of his chair. "I confess," he told them, still beaming, "I moved a bit too quickly tonight." He glanced at his watch, his eyes widening slightly as he noticed the time. "Oh dear, I really did move a bit too quickly…but you see, I was so worried that you'd have gone, so I…I wasn't really paying attention. Maybe that's why I had so much trouble with the subject tonight." He shrugged.

"Remus," Harry began, "you're going to have to leave, you know."

Hermione didn't think that was the best way to begin. Lupin seemed to agree. He stared questioningly at Harry, giving Harry a look that asked wordlessly for him to elaborate. "Well," Harry insisted, "Now that we've found you, I'm sure other wizards will start showing up, for odd reasons like Hermione's. And that's hardly safe, we can't just assume that all of them will keep their mouths shut on the subject."

Lupin chuckled. "Oh don't worry, Harry," he assured him, "I don't make assumptions like that one. I'm a lot more careful than you seem to think."

"Then, there have been others?" questioned Hermione. Lupin nodded.

"Oh yes," he said, "many of them, actually. I was lucky at the beginning, because anyone who showed up here was too young to really know me. But after a while, there were ministry officials, older wizards, recent Hogwarts alumnae…it wasn't going to do. So I had to do something about it." He shot Hermione a nervous sort of look, and his voice was guilty as he finished the sentence. "There wasn't anything for it, you see, I _had_ to…"

"Had to do what?" asked Harry, frowning.

"Well…" Lupin clicked his tongue against his teeth, in a way that reminded Hermione inexplicably of Molly Weasley. "I couldn't very well have them remembering that they'd seen me, so…they didn't."

It took Hermione several moments to actually realize what he meant by that cryptic comment. She froze, turning to exchange a look with Harry, who was suddenly no longer as pleased as he'd been previously. Lupin, apparently catching their incredulous stares, sighed in some resignation, and dropped into his armchair.

"You've been modifying memories?" asked Hermione, the pitch of her voice rising in her confusion.

Harry shrugged, although his expression of dour concern hadn't changed. "We've done it ourselves plenty of times," he reminded her, "at school and outside of it. It's not a dangerous charm."

"Wrong, Harry," said Lupin, "it's actually a very dangerous charm. You can never be sure exactly how much of a memory you're taking away, and if you cut too far into their minds, you can wipe out very important things. Sometimes, if you're really careless, they can forget how to speak, or walk, and never know why it happened."

"But you've just said that you do it all the time!" Hermione was indignant now. She'd been willing to protect his privacy as long as he wasn't actually hurting anyone. Performing any sort of magic on muggles was quite enough, but-

Lupin looked fixedly at Hermione, temporarily ignoring Harry's presence as he attempted to catch Hermione's eyes. "What would you have had me do?"

Hermione had to confess to herself that she really had no idea what she'd have preferred in the circumstance. "I'd rather," she shot, "have you never have put yourself in this situation! This is bad on almost every count, why…if you and I hadn't known each other, in the days before you-!"

"Before I what, Hermione?" The former professor's voice was gentle, and Hermione felt a twinge of embarrassment. "Before I turned over to the side of evil?" He snorted slightly, shaking his head slowly at her. "No, no, I think in the grand scheme of things that I could be doing, I'm not engaged in anything as bad as all that. Laws aren't always best for the wellbeing of the community, no matter how much the Ministry would like us to believe that they are. I'm still an innocent man."

Hermione felt that he was far from innocent, but there was nothing that she could say to contradict that reasonable tone in his voice.

A knock at the door drew all three of them out of the conversation. Hermione glanced apprehensively at the door, but Lupin looked unconcerned. Walking over to it, he stopped with his hand on the doorknob, to ask "Who is it?"

There was no response. Instead, upon hearing his voice, the person on the other end of the door apparently decided that they no longer wished to come in, because Hermione could hear footsteps heading away from the dressing room, and down the hall.

Harry shrugged. "Wrong room number, I suppose.

Something cold, however, had slipped into Hermione's stomach, and she gave Lupin a long, hard look as she listened to the sounds of the footsteps dying away. There weren't really enough doors back here for someone to get the wrong room so easily, and the bathrooms were very clearly marked. Then again, she supposed that anyone could make a mistake without thinking about it, couldn't they?


	5. Trouble in Paradise

**Chapter Five: Trouble in Paradise**

"Harry," whispered Hermione, "I don't think we should stay here."

Harry looked puzzled. "Yeah?" he asked. "What's up?"

Hermione just shook her head, and shot an appealing look at Lupin. He had his eyes on the door, the corners of his mouth turned down in a dour, concerned sort of frown. "I think Hermione may be right," he said, unexpectedly backing her up. "I don't believe in grasping at shadows, but I don't think it would be wise for us to stay here at the moment. It's very likely that someone might have seen us here together, and even if they haven't recognized me, I'm afraid that Harry is unmistakable."

"Don't I know it," muttered Harry. Hermione squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. It wasn't his fault that he was the savior of the known world. Well, actually, it was very much his fault, but she didn't think that wasn't anything to be ashamed of.

Lupin strode to the door, opening it a crack to peer outside of it. Hermione craned her neck to try and catch a glimpse of the hallway outside over his shoulder, but he slid the door shut again before she'd had a chance. "Very good," he said, "all clear. Let's go now, shall we?"  
"Wait," Harry was insisting, as Lupin pulled the door open and began to walk briskly through the main lobby towards the parking lot. "I don't understand, five minutes ago you said that you didn't think you'd be going anywhere. What gives?" He quickened his pace to keep up with them as Hermione followed Lupin out of the building at a very fast walk.

Lupin didn't say anything in response until they were out on the sidewalk, watching a few straggling cars pull away into the darkened street. Hermione almost bumped into him as she emerged from the building, with Harry, still sputtering in some confusion, close behind her.

"We'll go back to my place," Hermione was saying. Harry nodded, and slipped his wand from his pocket. Even as he raised it, and opened his lips to begin an incantation, Hermione grabbed his wand hand and forced it back into his again, hissing through her teeth at him as she did so. "Don't, Harry! If we're being followed, we don't want to be seen with our wands waving around."

Lupin shook his head. "Doesn't matter," he said, "if we're being followed, then we've already been seen. Best to get out of here as fast as we can." Glancing around, he added "There's no one here anyway. No one's going to see us."

Hermione wasn't sure, but Harry and Lupin had clearly made the decision for her. Pursing her lips, she grabbed on to Lupin's arm. "We'll meet you there, Harry," she said, raising her own wand with her free hand. Harry nodded, and, with the same popping noise that she'd heard that morning in her bedroom, he had disappeared. Hermione took a nervous, furtive glance at each of the parked cars before lifting her wand, and whispering "2051 Beulah Street!" She felt Lupin's hold on her arm tighten as the two of them followed Harry's lead, and disapparated.

* * *

Harry was seated at the kitchen table when they arrived, the dirty plate that had contained his eggs still lying in the center of it. Hermione released Lupin, and drew a chair out for him, even as she muttered "Lavendium," and waved her wand at the offending dish. The plate disappeared.

"Will someone please explain," Harry began, "what exactly we're doing?"

Hermione gave him an exasperated look. "Don't be stupid, Harry," she shot, and then sighed, smiling to try and take some of the sting out of her words. "Honestly. You heard the knock on the dressing room door when we were back there. Whoever it was who knocked only needed to hear Lupin's voice to know what he needed to know, and then he was off. I didn't feel…like we should take any chances, after that."

"Could have just as easily been a wrong room number, like I said." Harry insisted, Lupin shook his head. He gave Hermione's small but decently tidy kitchen a cursory, somewhat surprised glance. Before he had a chance to voice whatever his opinion was on that matter, however, they heard footsteps on the stairs.

Ginny Weasley was taking the stairs two at a time, as she rushed headlong down them towards where Harry sat. He went rigid upon seeing her, and his knuckles turned white as he clenched his hand on the edge of the table. Hermione stepped forward, worried that some sort of row might break out, but Harry waved her back with one hand, still looking at Ginny.

"Harry!" Ginny was calling, her faced suffused with what Hermione judged to be relief. "I'm so glad I've found you! I came home, and there wasn't anybody there. No one around seemed to know where you'd gone!"

"It's not unusual for me to go out alone," Harry was saying, somewhat coldly. "Why would you be so anxious to know where I was?"

"Well, because I…" she trailed off, glancing between Harry's closed face, and Hermione's averted eyes. "Well, I suppose it wasn't rational, really. Just a woman's concerns." She grinned, shrugging, but Harry didn't return the smile.

"I thought you'd told me," he said, "that you spent the night at Hermione's last night?"

"Oh!" Ginny's grin broadened, but Hermione could see her washing her hands together behind her back in some agitation. "I'm so sorry, Harry, I meant I was going to Neville and Luna's! They had me over for dinner last night. Is that why you're looking so angry? My goodness, Harry, you've been out looking for me all day, haven't you? Silly…you're always so worried about me." She took a few steps forward, and reached up to kiss Harry, but he coughed, and turned away from her. Gesturing at Lupin, he spoke over his shoulder to Ginny, not meeting her gaze.

"Actually," he said, "Hermione and I met up with an old friend of ours."

Ginny stared for a moment, and then squealed with delight, running up to Lupin and hugging him. "Professor Lupin! It's been so long, we were starting to really wonder about you! How are you?" She gave him a cursory glance. "You don't look a day older than when we last spoke, still as young as ever, it's so _good_ to see you!"

Lupin looked somewhat taken aback by this effusion of Ginny's. Harry continued to glare at her, and Hermione felt the tension in the room reaching the breaking point. "We were just going to have some dinner," she said, deciding that now would be the perfect time to distract her friends with some food. "Harry, Ginny, you two sit down. You too, Professor. I'll just-!"

Harry shook his head. "No thank you, Hermione. I think Ginny and I will just be going home." Ginny opened her mouth to protest, but Harry gave her such a stern look that the words wilted on her lips, and she allowed him to lead her away from the table with a meek, very worried look on her face. "Goodbye, Remus. See you again soon, I hope."

"Goodbye!" called out Hermione, trying not to be very worried as she heard her front door close behind Harry and his wife. Maybe, she thought hopefully, Ginny really had been at Luna and Neville's. But no, that couldn't be. After all, she' d used Hermione's house as an alibi more than once…and who knew if she'd done it many times before, times that Harry hadn't even thought of?

"Trouble in Paradise?" asked Lupin quietly from just behind her. She turned to see that he, too, was watching the passage that led to the front door.

Sighing, Hermione sat down across from him at the table, shaking her head helplessly. "You could," she muttered, "call it something like that. Are you hungry?"

Not waiting for his answer, Hermione strode over to the refrigerator. She began rummaging around in it, looking for something suitable that she could prepare for dinner. For the life of her, she couldn't remember what Lupin liked. "Do you have a preference?" she asked him, with her head still in the fridge. "I can't say we've got a wide and luxurious selection, but I'm sure I could figure something out if you wanted anything in particular."

Lupin's answer as a strange one. "Is Harry happy?" he asked Hermione, in a distant, thoughtful voice. Hermione looked at him, uncertain of how to answer that. "It's just," Lupin added, as if feeling the need to justify his question, "he didn't look terribly happy, and I'd always sort of hoped that when the war was over, he'd get to settle down and live a normal life."

"Oh," Hermione assured him, trying to suppress a derisive laugh, "his life is normal enough. It's not like numerous other, much less famous men suffer exactly the same thing."

"Yes," agreed Lupin sadly. "But I'd just hoped that maybe he'd get some peace and quiet, that's all. I can' think of anyone who deserves it more than Harry."

Hermione sighed. She abandoned the fridge, and took a seat across from Lupin again, watching the worry lines in his brows. "I know," she said, "I really do. God knows I want him to be happy more than anyone else I know, but…sometimes I feel as though he brings it upon himself, with the people he takes up with, and the things he spends his time doing. Harry's meant for action, and I wonder if he really could live a peaceful life after all. Doesn't mean I don't wish he could."

Lupin didn't speak for several minutes. "I don't suppose I've very good about looking after him," he said, in such a low tone that Hermione had to lean forward to be sure that she was hearing him correctly. "Seeing as I've been gone for three years, I haven't exactly been around."

"You? It's hardly your fault," Hermione assured him, a bit surprised. "Harry's a grown man, capable ot taking care of himself. We all want to help him, but ultimately he's got to make his own decisions and live with them. Ginny Weasley's one of them. Maybe he'll come around, maybe she will, but you of all people shouldn't be kicking yourself for it."

"No," Lupin responded adamantly, "No, but you're wrong. It's more my concern than anyone else's. I…I was supposed to look after him, when James and Sirius died. I'm the only one left, after all, I was supposed to make sure that he was happy. That's what I wanted. That's what we all wanted." He grimaced. "I know that sounds very strange, but…it's important to me, and I haven't been there."

Hermione didn't blame Lupin for being overly concerned. As Harry's best friend, she'd spent plenty of sleepless nights herself wondering why, after everything he'd been through, he couldn't have settled down with a woman who'd at least make him feel safe and happy, somewhere that he could recover from and shake off the effects of his part in the war. She'd even broached the subject with him a few times, but he was always so insistent that Ginny would change, that he loved her, or that there wasn't anything for it and that they'd just have to ride out the storm together. "He wants to make it work," she said, with a shrug. "He thinks that ultimately, it will make them happy."

"Never one to give up, our Harry." Lupin smiled appreciatively, despite his misgivings. Hermione found herself smiling back, something that was a lot easier to do when the older man wasn't looking so sad. In fact, she'd seen him looking concerned so often that she was surprised she liked his smile so much. There was something quietly, elegantly charming about it, something strangely…innocent, in a way she couldn't quite describe. Seeing Lupin smile brightened Hermione considerably, and she spoke with more conviction than she'd felt the minute before.  
"No, he's not the type to quit," she agreed, "but he's also pretty good at bouncing back. I think he's gonna be okay."

"You'd know better than I would." Lupin's smile faded for a moment as he spoke, but he made an effort to revive it again, gesturing towards the table . "But you're hungry, and I'm rambling on. You wanted dinner. Can I help? I'm not a marvelous cook, but I have learned how to throw some things together. You do that when you're living alone."

"I know," Hermione replied, shrugging.

"Yes," agreed Lupin, "I guess you do, don't you."


	6. Writer's Block

**Chapter Six: Writer's Block**

"James was often just reckless," Lupin was telling Hermione over dinner, which consisted of pasta salad that they'd whipped up from noodles and frozen salmon cuts. "He just rushed into things, didn't think about them too clearly, never gave himself a chance to be afraid. But Sirius was a lot more shrewd, even if he was more of a troublemaker. He understood the workings of things, knew the best ways to get around the system and the teachers. He provided the means for James to wreak his havoc." He chuckled, and swished the last noodles around in his bowl, as if he was trying to make them last longer. Seeing this, Hermione waved her wand, and a bit more pasta was transferred from the main serving dish into his bowl. Lupin gave her a grateful nod. "I guess I see a little of both of them in Harry. That's probably for the best. He gets the best of both worlds."

"And what about you?" asked Hermione. "You were just a saint, I suppose? Never did a thing wrong of your own accord?"

"Who, me?" Lupin gave her a lock of mock-incredulousness, and then grinned. "Oh, I was my fair share of difficult, but more by association that anything else. When James and Sirius didn't have time to do their homework, because they were serving too many detentions, I let them copy my notes and let their mischief breed unchecked."

Hermione snorted. "Well, that sounds familiar." Picking up her own bowl and empty glass, she carried them over to the sink, and deposited them on top of the other dirty dishes with a clatter. "I suppose some things never do change."

Lupin shrugged. "Who'd want them to? I know it's probably hard for you to believe that an old timer like me could harbor such dangerous thoughts, but without a little bit of creative trouble, things just aren't as fun, or interesting." Pointing his wand at the sink full of dishes, he added, "Lavendium," before Hermione had a chance to stand up. The plates and glasses wiped themselves sparkling clean again.

"I'm not sure I agree with you there," started Hermione. "Oh, thanks," she added, glancing at the dishes. "You're one of the most clean and courteous houseguests I've ever had." Lupin made a little bow, and she giggled.

Applying the dishwashing charm to his own pasta bowl, Lupin tucked his wand away, and sat back against his chair with a contented sigh. "The pleasure's all mine," he assured her. "I haven't eaten that well in a very long time."

"They don't pay you well to do those tricks?" Hermione was surprised. There had certainly been enough people in the audience to justify a decent paycheck, and the admissions price had been more than steep enough.

"Oh, they do," Lupin said, "but I so rarely go out, for…well, for obvious reasons. Muggle takeout is hardly satisfying, night after night. I think we did better with morsels from the freezer than those pizza places do with all the various ingredients they have. You must have the magic touch."

Hermione recognized the muggle expression as one that her own father had used to use, and she grinned appreciatively. "I guess that makes two of us," she reminded him. "Maybe you should quit the stage, and we should take up writing cookbooks."

Lupin grinned back. "Hardly an appropriate exhibition of your excellent writing skills." That thought seemed to remind him of something, and he leaned forward on his elbows. "By the way, how's that book of yours going? The on with about the muggle magic show. You're not…only writing about mine, are you?"

Lupin seemed worried, and Hermione hurried to reassure him, wanting to restore that sparkle to his eyes. "Of course not," she promised, "I've been to a dozen of them. I don't even have to put yours in, if you don't want. It's probably better if I take it out entirely."

Lupin was unconvinced. "Far be it from me. You could just change the names. I doubt anyone would recognize my act from the midst of all of the others. The tricks are all the same, really."

Hermione had to admit that they were. There was nothing particularly novel about any of the performances she'd attended. That was good, on one hand, because she could compare them to each other very easily without too much deviation in the kind of tricks used. On the other hand, it was annoying, because there was only so much observation to be made, when one was watching essentially the same show over and over again.

"My favorite," Lupin was saying, "is performing for children. No matter how many times I do the same thing, children love it. They're constantly amazed. That's what wonderful about being young, I suppose. Everything's new, a hundred times over. Even magical children seem to appreciate such things, because they're not old enough to be sick of seeing it. I suppose that's one of the reasons I liked teaching so much."

"So," Hermione said, "go back to teaching. Minerva McGonagall-!"

He smiled, but put a hand on her wrist to forestall her. "Minerva McGonagall might allow it," he replied to thought she'd never finished, "but the terrified parents never would. I can't blame them. I'd be just as careful with my child, if I had one."

Suddenly, Hermione realized how much Lupin must regret Harry being a grown man. He'd come into Harry's life when he was a student of thirteen, still impressionable, still, in many ways a child. Now he was an adult, hardened by experiences of age and trouble that would darken even the most carefree soul. Lupin wouldn't ever have another chance to influence or to try and save Harry, who he seemed to consider his personal responsibility. That, she decided, must be a very hard thing to come to terms with, and she found herself looking on the former Professor with a measure of sympathy, and a good deal of respect.

"Ah, well," he said ruefully, "you all turned out all right. Better than all right. I guess it's strange to watch the young get older, and to know that you're getting older yourself, without really feeling it."

Hermione wasn't sure she liked that at all. Perversely, she didn't want Lupin to think of her as a child. She'd met him the same year that Harry had, had gone through a similar growth, and yet a pang of irritation shot through her when she thought that Lupin might still think with fondness on the days that she had been a student.

"Enough talk." Lupin rose from the table, his manner brisk. He looked a bit embarrassed, as if he was sorry he'd gone on about such sensitive, incriminating subjects for so long. "I've intruded on your hospitality long enough, and you can't know how grateful I am."

"You're not leaving, are you?" Alarmed, Hermione glanced at her watch. It was 10:00 PM. "Where are you off to?"

"The theater, naturally." Lupin waved away her protests as Hermione opened her mouth. "No, I have to go. You know I do. There's a show tomorrow night, and my absence is significantly more conspicuous than my presence. If I don't show up, they'll be looking for me, and before long my story will get out. It's better as if I act as if nothing's happened. Besides, Harry could have been right, about the knock being an accident."

"You know that it wasn't," Hermione began, unable to believe her ears. "Show or not, you can't just go back in there as if nothing's happened. You're putting yourself in a lot of danger, Professor, you should quit while you're ahead!"

In response, Lupin took both of Hermione's hands in his own, smiling at her with a deal of understanding and gratitude that required no words. "I'll be just fine," he promised her. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Hermione. Don't you worry about it. You've been nothing but generous and kindhearted with me, and Harry's lucky to have a friend like you. It makes me feel better that he does."

Lupin raised his wand, whispering "The Dressing Room, Townsend Theater." Even as he disapparated in front of her, Hermione called out, "But we're your friends too, Professor! Don't forget about that! We're looking out for you, too!"

But Lupin was already gone.

Hermione slept soundly that night, despite her worry for Lupin. After two nights on end of no sleep and plenty of stress, she drifted off the moment that her head hit the pillow. It was late in the day when she awoke again, and, cursing herself for her own sluggishness, she immediately commenced working on her book.

The trouble was, her mind kept wandering in two predictable, but unwelcome directions. Every time she put her quill to the page, she started to think about Harry, bent over his own kitchen table while Ginny pranced off to someone else's bed. She thought about Lupin, who didn't seem to understand that if the Ministry caught him, he'd lose a lot more than his living.

She made several valiant attempts to concentrate. _The tendency of muggles_, she began to write, _to be dazzled by the very slightest shows of magic causes them to be easily taken in. When a real wizard presents himself, therefore, they can hardly tell the difference._ She read that over, and then stopped, aghast. No, no, that would never do. She certainly couldn't bring real wizards into this. After all, there weren't supposed to be any real wizards in her research to speak of.

She tried again. _The tendency of muggles to be dazzled by the very slightest shows of magic is characterized by an inability to distinguish…_ to distinguish what?

Hermione put her forehead down on the desk. It was suddenly extremely clear to her why Lupin found it so appealing to work for muggles, who weren't discerning enough to tell the difference between fake and real magic. Something that easy would have done her a lot of good at this moment.

She reached her quill back into the ink bottle, and then raised it again to the page. She started a new line, but, to her surprise, the quill scratched across the page without making a mark. Glancing down at it, Hermione sighed in exasperation. She'd apparently run completely out of ink. She'd have to get some in the morning. Not that it mattered, she thought darkly, as she couldn't manage to write anything worthwhile anyway, for the moment.

"Just black, please," Hermione said to the woman behind the counter at Flourish and Blotts. "And…maybe some of the new purple stuff. The one back there, behind the counter." She gestured at a few bottles of dully plum-colored ink just to the left of the clerk's hand.

The clerk pulled a cardboard box out from a drawer somewhere behind her, and deposited several bottles of black and purple ink into it. She held out her hand without saying anything, and Hermione handed over a few coins, wondering to herself about the rudeness of salespeople.

It was at that moment that she caught sight of a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. Turning to look through the window, Hermione saw Ginny Weasley, hurrying down the street outside of Flourish and Blotts, her long, and, unfortunately for her, conspicuous red hair billowing behind her as she went.

For a moment, Hermione wasn't interested in Ginny. After all, it was perfectly normal for her to be shopping in Diagon Alley of a morning. It was when she caught sight of the man rushing forward to meet Ginny that Hermione was aware of how unusual it really was.

Blaise Zabini, resplendent in fine black robes which gave him a very sinister, and very dashing appearance, took a few steps forward, and made as if to embrace Ginny. She pushed him away, and, glancing form side to side, grabbed his arm and ran him into the nearest alleyway, totally out of sight. Hermione craned her neck around, trying to see a little farther through the window, but Blaise and Ginny seemed to have been gone. She couldn't deny that Ginny and Blaise running off together like that was, in light of recent events, pretty incriminating, and yet even she didn't want to think about Ginny stopping as low as to run around with someone of whom she had such a very low opinion. It was true that there had never been any proof that Blaise had been a death eater, or a dark wizard of any kind, but the two of them had known each other at school, and Blaise had been a nasty kid. What Ginny could possibly see in him, Hermione had absolutely no idea, but she got no points for taste.

"Ma'am?" She turned to find the clerk eyeing her with some displeasure. "Ma'am, you're blocking my counter."

"Oh, sorry." Hermione took her box and moved away, farther towards the window. Something even less appealing had occurred to her since she'd seen Ginny disappear into the alley. It was Hermione's responsibility as Harry's best friend to tell him all about this, and she couldn't bear to think of his reaction when she gave him proof that not only was Ginny unfaithful, but with a former Slytherin.


	7. The Price of Heroics

**Chapter Seven: The Price of Heroics**

It didn't take long for Hermione to decide that it would be much better for everyone involved if she went straight to Harry's, and told him what she'd seen immediately, and in person. He'd have a lot more time to cool down if she told him about it, than if he caught Ginny in the act. When Harry was under a lot of pressure, he tended to be too shocked to think about what he was doing, and Hermione feared a bit for the consequences if he was rash or hasty.

For that reason, she found herself reluctantly knocking on Harry's front door an hour or so later, her box of inkwells under one arm. No one answered her knock, and she worried that maybe Harry had taken it upon himself to go out and search for Ginny, despite Hermione's own advice to the contrary. Just as she was about to turn and leave, however, she heard the door creak open behind her, and turned to find Ginny herself standing in the door way. Ginny was no more pleased to see Hermione than Hermione was to see Ginny, and the two women stood, exchanging uncomfortably blank looks for several moments, before Ginny ushered Hermione into the house.

"I imagine you'll be looking for Harry," the redhead was saying, too quickly to allow Hermione to get a word in. "He's not home right now, I'm not entirely sure where he is. I can call him by floo, if it's really important, but I don't like to bother him when he's out if I don't have to. He can get really irate with me sometimes, really intense, and I just don't…" She trailed off, wringing her hands helplessly, the color rising to her cheeks as she tried vainly to gain control of herself. Hermione just stared at her, accusing Ginny balefully with her eyes, without ever opening her mouth. "I suppose it's…probably best that he's not in, then," Ginny said after a moment, with a long sigh. "We can just talk…like women. Between the two of us. Can't we?"

Hermione let that question hang in the air for a moment before responding. She wasn't particularly keen on talking to Ginny about anything at all at the moment, but, on the other hand, perhaps she could take this opportunity to help correct the problem before it got any farther out of hand. "I don't know if we can," she replied, honestly. "I think you should tell me exactly what's going on. Now. Before I have to s peak to Harry about it. He does know, you know, that you're hiding something from him, and I don't' think it'll take him much longer to find out who you've been seeing."

"No, it certainly won't if you go and tell him, will it?" Ginny's eyes flashed angrily for a moment, but Hermione continued to regard her, coldly unperturbed. "Well, all right," the younger woman sighed, after a moment, her anger diffusing somewhat in the heat of Hermione's stare. "It's got to come out now either way, whether you tell him, or he guesses, or what have you. But I don't see what I have to tell you, since apparently you already know."

"Not the whole thing," Hermione reminded her. She began to explain to Ginny all about Harry's suspicions, about his coming to Hermione to demand where his wife was, and then about how she'd seen Ginny and Blaise together just a couple of hours ago, in Diagon Alley. The more Hermione spoke, the more red Ginny grew, until she was forced to turn away from Hermione to hide her mortification. "So now that I've got most of the story," Hermione finished, "I'd like to hear the full details from your own lips, and maybe we can bury this catastrophe right now, before anyone gets hurt further."

"Oh, no, no, we aren't going to bury it," Ginny retorted, some of her fierceness returning. Hermione raised her eyebrows, surprised. "You can't tell me that I haven't suffered too, in this…this sick joke of a marriage."

"Sick joke?" Hermione clenched her fists, trying determinedly to keep her anger in check. "You know that Harry's always been good to you, that he's always loved you. Why, I've been telling him to leave you for months now, and he keeps telling me how much you two are really in love with each other, how it's going to work once you get yourself sorted out."

"Me? Get _myself_ sorted out?" Now it was Ginny's turn to be self-righteous. "The great Harry Potter, the great hero of the Second War, the Boy Who Lived hasn't done anything with his life since he got back from that accursed war. He just sits there, looking tired, and upset, reading a book, or riding his schoolboy broom around the back of the house. He's broken, Hermione. He's not the man he used to be."

"He's not broken!" Hermione all but screamed. She braced her wrists against the kitchen table, taking a deep breath before continuing. "Don't you dare call him a broken man. Harry's one of the most wonderful people I've ever met, he's braver than you or I will ever be. He can't help the fact that the war did awful things to him, it did awful thing to all of us, and Harry went through the worst of it. He saved all of our lives, and he watched people he loved-!"

"We all watched people we loved die, Hermione." Ginny was shaking her head inexorably, and Hermione had an insane urge to reach over and pluck out a tuft of that long red hair. "We all lost people, we all lost important years of our lives. We've all seen things that no one should ever have to see. I know that Harry's a good man. " Ginny lowered her voice, and placed a hand over Hermione's, tightening it so that Hermione couldn't pull away. "Don't you think I love him for it? But I can't live like this…no one should have to. He is a broken man, for all that you refuse to see it. He doesn't know what to do with himself, and I don't know what to do with a man who's too exhausted by the life he's lived to get up in the morning. I need someone who has a real life. Blaise," and she hurried on before Hermione had a chance to cut her off, "Blaise isn't perfect. He's not a hero, like Harry, but he has a livelihood that Harry just can't seem to grasp anymore, and he makes me feel like a human being, not a drone trapped trying to put back together a broken man. Do you understand me?"

Hermione didn't say anything. She didn't want to understand. There was nothing wrong with Harry, she told herself. He was just a little tired. If Ginny would only stop making his life more difficult, maybe he'd have a chance to be the man that Ginny so badly wanted him to be.

"When I saw Remus Lupin last night," Ginny added, after it became clear that Hermione didn't have anything to say, "I realized…Harry's starting to look like him. Old, tired, and so lonely. I'm not ready to spend the rest of my life with a man like that. I'm sorry, Hermione."

But Hermione would have spent her life with a man like that, she told herself, because a man like Harry, or like Remus Lupin was a man worth waiting for. Those two would bounce back, because they always did, and they'd rise up again, full of life, if only they were given enough time. Why could she see that, but Ginny, who'd been married to Harry for three years, couldn't see it?

Then, even as Hermione asserted that to herself, another, equally disturbing thought began to trickle into her consciousness. Ginny had seen Lupin at the house the other night, and Hermione hadn't given her any injunction against speaking about the man. Harry, being so preoccupied, and seeing so little of Ginny as it was probably hadn't told her not to speak about him either.

"I wish I could make you understand that I'm not an ogre, Hermione," Ginny was saying, but now, Hermione wasn't listening anymore.

"Did you tell Blaise?" she asked, clasping the hand hat Ginny had laid on hers in an urgent grip. "Did you?"

Ginny looked puzzled. "Did I tell him what? Of course he knows about all of this, I've told him a hundred times. That's how…that's how we got to know each other in the first place."

"Not this," insisted Hermione, dismissing the subject as if she'd never cared about it. "About Lupin. Did you tell him that you'd seen Lupin?"

"Oh, yeah, I think I did." Shrugging, Ginny removed her hand, turning away from the older woman. "Although I don't see what on earth that has to do with-!"

Hermione raised her wand. "Townsend Theater" she said, and disapparated. As the kitchen disappeared around her, she caught one final glimpse of Ginny's totally confused face, as the redhead opened her mouth to try and call Hermione back.

Hermione realized, only as she popped into existence outside of the theater, that she'd just done something extremely stupid. An old woman, inexplicably walking a cat on a leash, stared at Hermione from the parking lot as Hermione rushed headlong towards the theater doors. She didn't have time to be overly concerned about it. Something cold and sick had thudded into the pit of her stomach, and she felt that her limbs weren't working themselves fast enough. Oh well, she thought, mentally crossing her fingers. Hopefully the old woman would just assume she'd been seeing things, and would let it go. After all, sometimes people hallucinated in heat like this. Heat stroke, or something like that.

Checking her watch, Hermione saw that it was almost five o'clock. That should give her plenty of time. After all, Lupin didn't go onstage until seven, so she was two hours early. That thought gave her little relief, as, if Lupin was waiting quietly in his dressing room, it would be very easy for someone to get in and abscond with him, without anyone noticing. Hopefully, she'd be the first to have that idea.

Hermione didn't stop to speak to the usher, but pushed right past him and a couple of other people to make her way into the back, towards the dressing room.

Lupin's door was wide open, and, with a twinge of dread, Hermione rushed into it, calling as she went."Professor Lupin? Professor?"

"Please, Hermione," came Lupin's voice from around the back of his armchair. "It's Cambio around here. You're the one always telling me that I have to be careful." He stood up, coming around the side of the chair, a stack of books in his hands, even as he spoke. Hermione expelled a very long breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "And," he continued, a bit sternly, "if you keep rushing in here like this, you're going to blow my cover yourself."

"Professor," stammered Hermione, "I…I don't think you're safe here. Anymore. At all."

Lupin sighed. "I'm pretty sure," he began gently, "that we had this entire conversation last night, and though I really do appreciate your concern-!"

There was a knock at the door. Hermione froze. Casting around for a solution, she rushed towards Lupin, and thrust him down behind the armchair. He opened his mouth to protest, but she shook her head at him, and he subsided. Both of them watched the door. The knock came again, and this time, a man's voice called out, "Mr. Cambio, sir? Are you there?"

Hermione didn't recognize the voice. She'd half expected it to be Blaise Zabini himself, and for a moment, she wondered if she was being ridiculously paranoid about the whole thing.

Before she had a chance to release Lupin, however, the door slid slowly open, and a face emerged around the doorframe that bereft Hermione of both relief and guilt in the same moment.

Rufus Scrimgeour had a singularly fierce face, especially frowning in that sour, suspicious way. He peered around the room for a moment, and then turned to say something unintelligible to someone apparently waiting outside of the room. To Hermione, it sounded a bit like, "the wrong room." After a moment's conference, Scrimgeour and another man, short, very pale, with a mess of dirty blond hair stepped into the room, and closed the door behind them.

Hermione covered her mouth to prevent the sounds of her panicked breathing from being heard by the two intruders. Behind her, Lupin muttered something under his breath, and the two of them were gone before Scrimgeour had a chance to turn and investigate the source of the noise.


	8. Man on the Run

**Chapter Eight: Man on the Run**

They appeared again in the middle of a large room, almost completely submerged in darkness. Hermione peered around her, trying to figure out where they'd ended up, but she could barely make out anything in the impenetrable darkness of the place. Lupin had her wrist in a death grip, and it took him several moments to remember to release her. When he finally did, he sank down on to the floor, and Hermione followed suit, trying despite the lack of light to see his face.  
"Where are we?" she asked, feeling her way up the wall with one hand, trying to figure out if she recognized the place.  
"Grimmauld Place," Lupin whispered.

Hermione frowned. "I thought you and Harry had put a spell on this place, so you couldn't apparat into it. Like the ones that guard Hogwarts."

"You're right, we did." The older man stopped whispering, and Hermione felt him relax slightly, releasing some of the tension that she could feel through his sleeve, pressed up against hers. "But Harry lifted the spell after the war. There didn't seem to be any reason to make it impenetrable, as no one really used it anymore. It still makes a very convenient little hideout."

"Scrimgeour'll come after us," began Hermione. "He'll find a way, he'll know where you're likely to hide."

"He doesn't have any idea where we are," insisted Lupin. "I doubt he even knows this place existed, or ever knew about it. Dumbledore didn't share everything with the Minister of Magic, I assure you."

Accepting that, Hermione settled against the wall, trying to come to terms with all of the things that had just happened. It felt like only seconds ago she'd been standing in Harry's kitchen, trying to keep herself from strangling Ginny. And now, what? Had Scrimgeour seen her? If so, what did that mean?

The ramifications of being Lupin's accomplice could be very serious, she realized, her heart sinking. If she had been seen, it really could all be over. She wouldn't be able to show her face again, if she was known as the woman who'd absconded with a recognized criminal. But then again, maybe the Ministry wasn't fully aware of what Lupin had been doing. There was always the possibility that she was overreacting…and yet, she'd told herself that so many times in the past few days, and each time, she'd been absolutely correct in her suspicions. That wasn't a comforting thought.

"I'm sorry," said Lupin, simply. There was a strained tone in his voice that distracted Hermione, and she raised her wand, muttering "lumos," to shed some light on the darkened scene. The tip of her wand ignited, and she could see that Lupin was slumped over, his head in his hands, staring blankly at the ground in front of them. Instinctively, she reached out to him, wrapped her fingers around his forearm and squeezed it reassuringly, though she felt far from assured herself.

"Harry will come after us," she told him, filling her voice with a confidence, and what she hoped was a semblance of sincerity. "He'll figure out what's happened, and it won't take him long to realize where we must be. After all, he's the one who used this place during the war, no doubt he'll know that you'd use it as a hiding place."

"They'll be watching Harry more than anybody else," Lupin reminded her, "and he won't be given the opportunity to come looking for us. Scrimgeour will have him trailed."

That, Hermione realized, was in fact very likely. They shouldn't count on anyone who was known to be close to them coming to rescue them. "Curse that Ginny," she hissed. "And to think I tried to stop her, to protect her from Harry's anger. I should have just let him at her, it would have served her right."

Lupin gave her a confused look, and so Hermione told him all about Harry's concerns, and how she'd caught Ginny with Blaise. "Ginny let it slip to Blaise that we'd brought you home," she finished, biting her lip regretfully. "And so one must assume that he, in turn notified the Ministry, or something like that. I'm so sorry, Professor, I didn't mean to…to ruin everything. I was just worried about you, Harry and I both were, and I thought…" she trailed off, realizing that if she had thought through it properly, they wouldn't be in this awful position right now.

Lupin didn't say anything for a few minutes, apparently thinking hard. "Well," he said finally, "there's no point in apologies now, and you only meant the best. It's not your fault, Hermione. Something was bound to happen eventually. I'm the law breaker, not you."

"I guess we both are, now." Hermione stood up, and, taking her lighted wand, began to light a few of the decrepit lamps that were placed haphazardly around the room. It had been abandoned for so long that most of them wouldn't let themselves be lit, but a few complied readily enough, and Hermione managed to coax a dim glow to coat out to cover most of the room. Having accomplished that much, she sat down again, feeling that she'd made the place at least a little bit more cheerful. Lupin, however, didn't look much happier.

"I'll turn myself in," he was saying, nodding to himself as he spoke. "I'll turn myself over to Scrimgeour, and say that I kidnapped you, put you under the imperius curse. Then they'll let you go, and just-!"

"You will do no such thing," retorted Hermione, glaring at him. "After we've gone through all of this trouble to keep you out of harm's way, you can't possibly be thinking of throwing it all away by giving up. I won't hear about it. I need you to come home with me and s peak to Harry. He needs you."

Those words appeared to have the desired effect on Lupin. He looked surprised at first, and then smiled, despite himself. "That shouldn't make me happy," he murmured ruefully. "I shouldn' be happy that Harry's in a position where he needs to turn to me for support."

"Everyone needs support sometimes," Hermione insisted. "And he's more alone than anyone I know. Ginny doesn't know what to do with him anymore, and I keep reaching out, but I feel as though he's barely listening when I do. He looks up to you, Professor, and he always has. He trusts you, because his father and Sirius trusted you. You can bring him around. So please, don't turn yourself in. You're too valuable to me to do something that noble."

Hermione had meant to say, "you're too valuable to us," but Lupin didn't' seem to notice the slip. He shook his head, the smile spreading over his worn face, and he held out his hands in a gesture of defeat. "You're a brave woman, Hermione Granger," he said, and then subsided into contemplative silence for a very long time.

Hermione couldn't tell, after a while, whether or not Lupin had fallen asleep. The bleak lighting was making her drowsy herself, and she fought to stay awake, willing herself to keep her eyes open. Now, Hermione knew, wasn't the time to sleep, not when she should be on the alert for anyone tracking them to their shelter. Lupin had said that no one would find them here, but she was sure that somehow, Scrimgeour could find out where the hideout of the Order of the Phoenix had once been. People were much freer with their talk, now that the war was over, and it wouldn't take him too much coercion to wheedle the information out of some complacent former member of the Order.

"In the morning," Hermione murmured, "we'll uncover the fireplace in here, and I'll send a message to Harry."

"I thought we'd already established that wasn't safe." Lupin glanced at her, and she could see that he, too, was exhausted by their flight.

Hermione shrugged. "I don't have a better idea," she said, "and we'll need to do something. We can't just camp out here until they get bored of looking for us and give up the chase."

"Why not?" asked Lupin, his voice infinitely reasonable. "The only thing we're missing is food, and I'm sure there's something in the storerooms. We're a lot safer staying in here than going out there to look for help."

"I won't," muttered Hermione, "eat anything that's been sitting in this place for as many years as the food in the storerooms must have been." She wanted to say more, but she was rapidly losing the battle with her bleary eyes, and she felt them closing despite all of her best attempts. "That's drastic, even for the current situation."

"We'll make do," Lupin assured her. "Are you all right? I think we'd better let you get some sleep, you've overtaxed yourself."

Hermione wasn't able to reply. She would have liked to, if she'd been awake, but by the time Lupin had lit his wand and raised it to examine her, she was already fast asleep, curled up into a ball against the stone wall.

* * *

Hermione awoke to find herself much more comfortable than she'd been when she fell asleep. Sitting up, she felt soft blankets under her hands, and glanced down to see that she was in bed, partially covered with a black wool blanket. The wool was a bit too warm for the weather, and she shoved it off of her. Lupin seemed to have managed to get the lights to work correctly, because this rom, apparently one of the upstairs bedrooms, was much brighter, and she could see all of the furniture clearly. It was, she realized, the room that she and Ginny had slept in all those years ago when they'd been staying at Grimmauld Place with the Weasleys and the Order of the Phoenix. How much, she realized, had changed since then, both for better, and for worse. Even then she hadn't been allowed to be a child, her childhood haven been somewhat taken away from her by her association with marked man Harry Potter. Still, she'd been happy, then, and she'd had friends around her. There was something to be said for that, even in the midst of the terror.

"Professor Lupin?" she called, sliding off the edge of the bed, and making her way out into the hall. She couldn't remember where each of the doors on the upper floor led, so she stuck her head into each of them, expecting to find Lupin in one of the bedrooms. He wasn't, however, in any of the rooms along her side of the hall. She checked several of the rooms across the hall, and was just beginning to feel the stirrings of alarm when she entered the last bedroom on the right side, the one that she remembered had once been Sirius Black's own room.

Remus Lupin was there, kneeling in front of a small desk, on which was placed a large, shimmering bowl of water. At least, that's what Hermione thought it was at first. As she got closer, she saw that Lupin was motionless, doubled over the desk, with his face buried in the bowl, which must she decided, be a pensieve.

"Professor?" Hermione raised a hand, but hesitated to pull him out of the memory. It seemed rude to intrude on him like that, and so she waited, standing awkwardly by the edge of the desk for a few moments.

Lupin began to shake slightly, vibrating against the desk with his face still firmly planted in the pensieve. Alarmed, Hermione put a hand on his shoulder, attempting to lift him from the water. He didn't budge. She was surprised to see tears streaming down the sides of his cheeks into the bowl, making ripples in the liquid memory and causing the stuff to splash gently against his face. Very carefully, she knelt beside him on the floor, and lowered her own head towards the pensieve, closing her eyes as she made contact.


	9. Youth and Experience

**Author's Note: **Dear readers: Suspend your disbelief for this chapter. Thank you. ;)

- Menolly

**Chapter Nine: Youth and Experience**

It had always disconcerted Hermione how easily one could walk around unnoticed, and through other people in pensieve memories. Having experienced the sensation several times before, she was certainly used to it, but that didn't mean she had to enjoy it. It always made her feel as though she were a ghost, and she rather preferred the land of the living.

Predictably totally unaware of her presence in the memory, several figures were lying on the grass next to a lake, just a few feet away. Hermione glanced up and around her, and discovered that she was standing outside of Hogwarts School, next to the Giant Squid's lake. A wave of nostalgia of her own swept through her as she remembered the days that she'd spent with Harry, Ron, and Ginny sitting by this very like, looking up at the sky and discussing their own plans and promises. Things were going to be different after the war, they'd assured each other. Everything was going to get better.

Someone snorted loudly, and someone else laughed, distracting Hermione from her own thoughts. She turned her attention back to the figures she'd noticed at first, and almost immediately identified one of them as a near copy of her own Harry Potter. That must be James Potter, then, she decided. The man on his back next to him was unmistakably a young, much healthier looking Sirius Black. Teenaged Remus Lupin was perched on a tree-limb, not far from them, and below that tree was a man who, by process of elimination, could only have been Peter Pettigrew.

"I didn't expect it to suck this much," James was saying, sighing as he tossed a small, golden ball which looked suspiciously like a snitch from one hand to another. "I mean, we talk and talk about the day that we're gonna graduate, and then we get there, and…that's it."

"Nah," Sirius replied with a shrug. "This is definitely not 'it.' This is just the beginning. We're legal adults now, so there's no end to what we can get up to. Nobody's gonna stop us, this time. We've got the world at our feet."

"You sound like Dumbledore," shot James, "with all of his lofty pep talks about life after Hogwarts."

"Well, he's right, anyway." Lupin swung down from the tree, narrowly avoiding stepping on Pettigrew as he approached his other two friends. "I mean, the real world really is a much freer place than Hogwarts."

"Maybe I don't want a freer place, "muttered James.

Sirius gave him an incredulous look, clapping him on the back with one strong hand and almost bowling him over with the force. "Shut up," he insisted amiably, "you're just sulking cause you're not gonna get to see Lily Evans every single day anymore. I tell you what, I'll sleep better at night when I don't hear you two kissing in your bunk every single morning. I'm relieved."

"Yeah…but." James shook his head, apparently unable to express what it was that was really bothering him. "It's not just that. I mean. Yeah, I'm gonna miss Lily, of course. But I mean…what about us, right? Are we gonna just forget about all of this, like it never happened? Talk about it in passing, like my dad does?" He straightened up, then, and adopted a quavering, reedy voice. "When I was your age, I had these three friends, and we were just nightmares when we were at school…" Trailing off, he frowned, and slumped down against the grass next to Sirius.

"That," promised Sirius glibly, reaching down to poke James in the ribs, "will never happen."

Pettigrew stood up, nodding emphatically. "I'm with Sirius," he insisted. "That's just not possible."

"Of course it's not," agreed Lupin, smiling his nonchalance. "Life would be so boring without you, you can't imagine that I'd let you all get away from me."

Sirius laughed, and the other three joined in, filling the quiet lakeside with the sound, until Hermione found herself smiling along with them. It was then that she was aware of a sound to her right, so soft that she could barely hear it through the raucous merriment.

Turning towards the sound, she saw the aging Remus Lupin whom she'd torn from the Townsend theater, standing stiffly across from his younger self, his face suffused with grief. His sobs were almost as silent as his laughter had been when he'd laughed at her at the theater, and yet the tears streamed down his face with ceaseless persistence, with Lupin making no effort to staunch them.

"But we were wrong," he muttered hoarsely, as Hermione hurried over to join him. "I wasn't supposed to let them get away from me, but…" he trailed off, the tears on his face hardening into streaks that marked up his cheeks and made him look even older and more tired.

"Let's go, Professor," whispered Hermione, but Lupin shook his head emphatically, pushing away the hand that she'd attempted to lay on his shoulder. She was forced to stand and watch as he continued to gaze at the happy figures on the grass, until she thought her heart was going to break for watching his do the same.

When she'd finally had enough, she took his hand, and turned on her heel. She couldn't take much more of this.

* * *

They pulled themselves back out of he pensieve in Sirius' bedroom, and Hermione shot a glance at Lupin, to see him wiping his eyes with one hand, his back to her. She waited, allowing him to get control of himself again as she got to her feet, and took a look at her watch. To her chagrin, the watch appeared to have stopped working, as it still read "10 PM," and the windows were flooded with light from outside, marking the mid-morning very clearly.

"I shouldn't have done that," whispered Lupin, shaking his head as if to clear it. "I…apologize. I guess I got carried away. I came up to Sirius' room, because I didn't remember if he had a fireplace up here, and I…well, I found his pensieve. I suppose that, unconsciously, I was looking for it."

Hermione nodded. It made sense that this was Sirius' pensieve, and she didn't blame Lupin for wanting to have a look. She'd probably have done the same thing, if she'd come across the memories of a long-lost friend of hers. Still, from the haggard look on Lupin's face, she wished she'd been fast enough to distract him from the attempt. It certainly hadn't made him feel any better.

"I guess," he said, "that I thought it would be fun to relive that ravishing thrall of youth, of thinking that you and your friends would be together forever, no matter what." Shaking his head, he laughed, but it was a derisive, self-reproachful sound. "I wouldn't exactly call that experience fun, now that I come to think about it. I don't think I ever want to do it again. After all, it doesn't do any good to live in your memories."

The desolate look on Lupin's face told Hermione very clearly that he wished one could live in one's memories, and she was suddenly very glad that she'd never kept a pensieve of her own, so that she wouldn't ever have the opportunity to dwell on what had, or could have been.

"Well," she said, trying to smile, "it's good that you don't have to, then. Live in your memories, I mean. You've got a present to live in, after all, so there's no reason why you need to spend all of your time being nostalgic, is there?"

Lupin looked thoughtful. "That does make sense," he murmured, "but it's hard to compare the past and the present, to tell you the truth. All of the things that could have been, that we could have had together…and I didn't try hard enough to make those things possible, because…well, you heard us. We all thought that we were inseparable, anyway. What could possibly have gone wrong?"

"I've lost people too," Hermione began, but Lupin cut her off with an impatient wave of his hand.

"You can't compare the loss of one person to the loss of another," he told her. "I know that we've all suffered, but that's no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to regret."

Hermione stepped forward, and took him by the shoulder, gently turning him to face her so that she could look into his now dry eyes. "Definitely, regret as much as you need to," she said. "Just don't forget to live, because we care about you, and respect you, and trust you enough to want you to be with us, right now, in the present, and we want you to feel as though it's worthwhile. You survived the war. Sometimes I feel like you, and Harry, and even I don't remember that we're all still alive. It sounds weird, but in the aftermath of something like that, I suppose it's an easy thing to forget. That's what we've got each other for, to remind us."

Lupin stared at her, his eyes widening as he registered surprise at her words. Then he smiled, slowly, shaking his head in disbelief and regarding her with a greater respect than she'd yet seen from him. "You're wise beyond your years," he said, "and beyond mine too, in many ways. We're lucky to have you."

Hermione's heart lurched unexpectedly, and she caught her breath at the unfamiliar sensation. He'd said "we're lucky," not "Harry's lucky," this time. Looking into his careworn face, Hermione wanted him to feel lucky to have her, wanted him to take some comfort in the knowledge that he wasn't as alone as he had been. Harry needed to know that, and Lupin, apparently, needed that reassurance just as badly.

He reached out and clasped her hands in his, squeezing them in a gesture of thanks. She was reluctant to withdraw her hands, and let them linger in his grasp for several minutes, as the smile Hermione had provoked lingered in the corners of Lupin's eyes. She still loved it when he gave her that genuine smile, and she felt for a moment that she understood why Harry didn't want to leave Ginny. In those few moments when the two of them were in accord, those rare times that Harry, and no one else could make Ginny happy, Harry must have felt as though Ginny was the most perfect person for him in he entire world, no matter what she'd done before.

"I've got to get you out of here," Lupin said finally, breaking the silence. "As soon as possible. We've got to get you back to Harry."

"We'll both go," insisted Hermione. Lupin nodded. Hermione wished she had some idea of how to make that assurance a reality, but she smiled at him, hoping he wouldn't see the unsurety lurking behind that smile.

She turned away for a moment, and removed Sirius' pillow from it's pillowcase. Discarding the pillow, she tossed the pillowcase over the pensieve, allowing it to settle over the bowl and cover the entire thing. She didn't want it to sit there as a temptation for Lupin any longer, but at the same time, she didn't quite have the heart to throw it out. Throwing out someone's memories was a much better thing than throwing out an old wand or set of robes. Still, this would suffice for the moment.  
"That'll do," she said, with some satisfaction, turning back to Lupin. To her surprise and alarm, he was staring past her shoulder, horror and consternation etched into his face. "Professor? What's wrong?"

Lupin didn't say anything, and Hermione spun around to follow his gaze. He was staring fixedly at the window, and it didn't take her more than a second to figure out why.

Through the window, they could both see very clearly that the moon was rising, dazzling and full, through the parting clouds. Hermione's heart began to beat very, very fast, and she spoke over her shoulder, afraid to look back at Lupin. "What...should we do? I don't' know how to make a wolfsbane potion…"

"Run," whispered Lupin, in a very dark voice. "Run. Now."


	10. A Kind of Love

**Author's Note: **Dear Readers,

I tried very hard to finish Chapter Eleven, as I hate cliffhangers myself, but my roommate found me passed out on the futon at 3:00 AM, and she told me that if I didn't go to bed, she'd disconnect our internet access.

Subsequently, it'll have to go up tomorrow.

Cheers,

Menolly

**Chapter Ten: A Kind of Love**

Hermione ran.

She pounded down the stairs, Lupin's feral screams echoing in her ears as he futilely tried to resist the transformation. Once or twice, he let out an almost human sound that tore at her heart, and made her want to turn back, only to hear, on it's heels, an animalistic growl which sent her hurtling forward again. She didn't know where she was running to, and she didn't have time to think about it, as she became aware of huge, thudding footsteps on the upstairs landing.

Her mind raced as she rapidly examined all of her options, trying not to be distracted by the inevitable terror. She couldn't just run out into the street from Grimmauld Place, and she didn't have a broomstick…or did she? Fleetingly, she wondered if Sirius had once owned a broomstick, and whether or not it might be somewhere on the premises. That hope was short lived, as Hermione realized immediately that she didn't have the time to go searching for it.

A frantic, tiny voice in the back of her head was telling her to get her wand out and apparate out of here as fast as she could. That did, obviously, seem like the most logical thing to do. And yet, if she left Grimmauld Place, she'd be easy for the Ministry to find, and it wouldn't take them long to force the truth out of her. If she left her, she'd be giving up on Lupin, and hadn't she just been the one telling him that now wasn't the time to give up?

That was, admittedly, a lot easier for her to say when a werewolf wasn't audibly crashing through an upstairs bedroom.

And then, all of a sudden, there was no werewolf in the upstairs bedroom. Hermione heard the staircase railings splintering before she saw him careening towards her. One of his feet smashed through the bottom step, and was temporarily embedded due to the force of his descent. Hermione had one breathless moment where the werewolf that had been Remus Lupin stared hungrily, angrily directly into her eyes, and then let out a roar that shook the furniture, knocking chairs over against tables, and unsettling empty portrait frames.

Belatedly, Hermione struggled to unearth her wand from the pocket of her muggle jacket, and pointed it at Lupin, mouthing first one incantation, then another to no avail. She couldn't seem to get her lips to form the words, and couldn't actually produce any of the spells that she knew would be best suited to the crisis at hand.

So, thought Hermione, this is it. I'm going to die. She couldn't digest that thought, and decided, on second thought, that she wasn't noble enough to just let herself get eaten. So much for martyrdom.

Lupin made a swipe at her with one huge claw, and Hermione ducked behind an end table. His talons sliced through the hardwood of the table leg so easily that it came away in ribbons, and Hermione had to roll across the floor to avoid his second attempt. Before she had a chance to get to her feet, Lupin had taken two strides and was standing just above her, snarling down at her and raising his claws, about to dive in for the final kill. Hermione screamed.

Then firm hands were gripping her around the waist, and she was thrown bodily out of the way as Lupin crashed down on to all fours where she'd been standing milliseconds before. He threw back his head, roaring in rage, turning to stare at the man who'd just appeared in the middle of the room.

Harry Potter whipped out his wand, and a bolt of green fire flew at Lupin's throat, as Harry yelled "expelliarmus!" The spell almost completely bounced off the werewolf, but Lupin paused for less than a second, stunned more by Harry's sudden appearance than by the effects of the charm.

"Hermione, get out!" Harry cried, gesturing frantically at her with one hand, even as he took a step forward, jabbing his wand at the werewolf. Hermione stood there, frozen and indecisive. His stupor worn off, Lupin made as if to pounce on her, but Harry shouted "stupefy!" and this time, Lupin reared back, struck full in the face by the spell.

This time, Harry didn't wait to see if Hermione was going to take the initiative. Leaning over towards her, he grabbed her arm, and the two of them disapparated before Lupin had a chance to regain his bearings.

Hermione toppled over as Harry relaxed his grip on her, once they were standing safely again in his bedroom. She braced herself against the bed, her heart pounding and her lungs screaming from the pain of breath she hadn't remembered that she'd been holding.

"You _idiot_," Harry yelled, his eyes flashing at her with a combination of rage and shock. "You _stupid _girl. What could you possibly have been thinking he was going to do, take one look at you and remember that he shouldn't eat his friends? You could have died, Hermione, you were _going_ to die, and you were just _standing_ there like a dumbstruck kid!"

Hermione didn't say anything. Things weren't making sense to her, and her head wouldn't stop spinning. She didn't understand what was going on, everything was happening far too quickly. After a moment, she felt clear enough to say, "but I couldn't leave him there…I'm supposed to be keeping them from finding him…"

"Yeah?" snarled Harry. "Yeah, well, a lot of good that would do if you were a pile of disconnected limbs. Jesus, Hermione, I wouldn't have expected to have to go in after you, of all people."

That statement reminded Hermione of something. Looking up at Harry, she frowned. "How'd you know to come get me? How did you know where we were?"

Harry shrugged. "It wasn't hard," he told her, sinking back into a chair, and deflating somewhat as he realized how much the episode had stunned Hermione. "When Ginny came running in to tell me that you'd left in a panic, I guessed that it must have had something to do with Remus. A few hours later, the Ministry was sending around emergency owl messages, saying that we should all be on the lookout for 'the dangerous and elusive criminal, Remus J. Lupin.' So, I put two and two together. If you had run off to find Remus, and he was missing, you were very likely both in hiding somewhere. Where else would he turn to but Grimmauld Place?"

"But," insisted Hermione, not satisfied, "you came to rescue me, just in the nick of time. How did you know that I was in trouble?"

For answer, Harry cocked his thumb over his shoulder, and Hermione saw that the full moon was still shining, mockingly bright, just between the trees. "Oh," she murmured, "Oh yes, well. Thank you for coming."

Harry drew a couple of lines in the air with his wand, which converged on each other to form a glass of water He grasped it, and pushed it into Hermione's hands. "Drink this," he said, "you've turned a terrible color. I almost didn't come to get you, actually. They've had a ministry wizard watching me ever since you two took off."

"Where?" The glass halfway to her lips, Hermione slammed it down on the table, whirling around as if expecting to see a man lurking just behind her. Harry shook his head.

"Relax, there's nobody here, not now. I sent Ginny home to her mother's, and the wizard tailed her, assuming, I guess that we'd all take refuge at the Weasleys' place. After all, we've done it plenty of times before. I only hope that Molly and Arthur don't get any trouble, but I'm not worried. I don't think it'll be a problem. After all, Blaise Zabini knows well enough that I won't be following Ginny home any time soon." A hard look came over Harry's face, and Hermione frowned. She'd almost completely forgotten about Harry and Ginny's intrigue in the midst of recent events, but it was clear that Harry hadn't.

"Ginny," Hermione began, but Harry looked away from her, and Hermione trailed off, feeling stupid.

"Ginny," Harry finished for her, "has promised that she's seen the error of her ways, and that she's thrown Zabini over entirely."

"Well!" Attempting a smile, Hermione tried to meet Harry's eyes again. "That's good, isn't' it? Live and learn?" But she knew exactly how worthless Ginny's words of remorse must have seemed to Harry. They sounded hollow to Hermione as well, but she wanted so badly for him to smile that she tried to force herself to believe that Ginny really did mean to try harder. "Things'll look up for you two now, I think."

"Do you?" Harry sounded glum. He clasped his hands together, pursing his lips in thoughtful agitation. When he finally looked at Hermione, she was surprised to see that he didn't look sullen, or angry, but rather thoughtful, somewhat distant. There was something brewing in his eyes, but when he spoke, he was clearly choosing his words very carefully.

"You know, Hermione," and he paused a moment, "there was a time when I thought that you and I…well…when I thought that maybe things would have been better if I'd…made a better choice." He finished almost lamely, looking helpless. Hermione reached out and clasped his hand, her own hand cold with the condensation from the water glass.

"Oh, I know," she assured him, smiling. "I believed that too, for longer than you know. I didn't think I'd ever tell you that."

"Yeah." As if Hermione's confession had broken the tension, Harry gave her a look of intense relief, laughing a little as he ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I…I know what you mean, believe it or not." He sat for a moment, smiling to himself, and then, after a moment, bit his lip, gazing into Hermione's face with an intensity that she felt should have made her uncomfortable, but didn't. "Do you ever…still feel like that? Sometimes?"

Those words, which might at one point have thrown Hermione into nervous flutters didn't have the effect that she expected them to. She considered his words for some moments, wondering what the answer really was to the question that she'd waited so long for him to ask. "No," she said, somewhat surprised at her own feelings. "No, I don't think I ever do." That was true, too, Hermione decided, feeling as though an unconscious weight had lifted from her shoulders. She certainly did love Harry, and she always had. She probably always would. She loved him just as much when he was sulking like a schoolboy as she did when he was rushing to rescue her from the arms of a ravenous werewolf. But it wasn't the kind of love that Harry had for Ginny, not the kind of love that made him so desperate to keep her to himself that he'd lose sleep and sanity over wondering whether she was out with Zabini, or some other man. It was a different kind of love, she knew, no less deep, and no less important, but not, unfortunately, the kind of love that Harry wanted so very badly. "You wouldn't' want me to," she added, seeing Harry's face fall despite his best attempts to look undisturbed by her response. "You love Ginny, you really do, and if you didn't, you wouldn't be asking me that question." She knew he was asking her because he was feeling Ginny's loss, and looking for someone to fill that place. But it was exactly because no one could fill Ginny's place that he was so very lonely. "But that doesn't' change the fact that you're my hero, Harry."

When he lifted his eyes again, Harry was smiling, almost sheepishly, but in a very genuine way. That smile made her think of Lupin, and thinking of Lupin made her suddenly all too aware of the empty place in the back of her own heart. That must be guilt, she thought, guilt over abandoning him without so much as a word, knowing that she wouldn't return. Wouldn't she? She'd promised him that she'd help him through this, and now she was thinking that she wouldn't return? That would never do. She couldn't live with that on her conscience, and…well, she couldn't live with it, that was all.

She tried to turn her mind away from thinking about what it was that Lupin was doing right now, and how much the transformation was hurting him. She wondered what it felt like to come to yourself and realize that you'd torn the curtains to pieces in a violent rage. Would he know that she'd gotten away safely? Would he remember that she'd been there at all?

"I have to go back," she found herself saying. Her head was suddenly surprisingly clear, despite all of the revelations she' come to in the last few minutes. It was very clear to Hermione that she needed to go back to Grimmauld Place and see Lupin. She would work out the rest after that. All that mattered at the moment was finding him again, making sure that he wasn't in pain anymore, that he wasn't in danger.

"Yeah," said Harry, "I can see that." Hermione smiled at him, and Harry shook his head at her. He reached out and clapped her on the shoulder, looking surprised, and a little bit amused. "Okay, then." He stood up from the table in one fluid movement, and waved his wand at her glass to clear it from the table. "So that's what we'll do. I'm going to go to the Burrow, to draw the Ministry's attention away from you. And you're going to go and…bring Lupin back."

Harry's blessing filled Hermione with new hope. If he said that it would work out, then no doubt everything would come right. She reached forward and threw her arms around his neck, and he hugged her reassuringly. She could feel him grinning even before she pulled away.


	11. It Always Matters

**Author's Note**: I would like to have a word with you all.

A couple of things apparently need to be made clear. This is a fictional story. The characters in it are obviously also fictional, and even if they are not in any way my own creation, I am, at this moment, coming up with what they are thinking and feeling. That means that what Harry Potter feels does not necessarily reflect my personal views about anything, whether that is the definition of love, or the effectiveness of a glass of water on nerves.

On a second note, I had the radio playing when I wrote this, and that new Hinder song came on, "Better Than Me." Now, normally I don't like Hinder…not at all, really. But somehow it seemed to put me in the Remus/Hermione mood, so I thought I'd share it for your listening pleasure. In the spirit of that song, also, I'd like to propose a challenge:

**Menolly's Fic Challenge**: Write a believable, convincing one-shot based on a song that you absolutely hate. Not a songfic, mind, you, but a fic inspired by a song or a set of lyrics. If anyone lets me know that they've posted a response to that, I'll highlight and link it in my author's notes.

Enjoy!

Menolly

**Chapter Eleven: It Always Matters**

Early in the morning, just after the sun had come up, Hermione reappeared in the dusty living room of Grimmauld Place. It was almost unrecognizable as a place where people had lived. Tables and chairs were overturned and destroyed. Long wood shavings and strings of what had been curtains lay around, abandoned in heaps on the floor. Several of the empty frames that had hung on the walls were cracked or smeared with dirt, and some were no longer in any shape to hang anywhere.

Picking her way through the remains of the house, Hermione started towards the staircase. She had to step carefully, avoiding large holes where Lupin had either fallen or torn through the boards. There were human footprints in the dust, which Hermione hoped were a sign that Lupin had transformed back, and retired to the upstairs bedrooms.

Hermione was prepared for more scenes of similar destruction on the upper floor. She wasn't surprised to see that everything was in equally horrible disarray. What she wasn't prepared for was the huddled figure in a torn shirt and trousers, his arm badly gashed, presumably by something that had fallen on him from the damaged walls. Lupin had his head buried deeply in his hands, his fingers running into the back of his hairline, his face totally obscured.

"That looks awful," Hermione murmured, crouching down next to him so that she could get a better look at the cut on his arm. "Deep, too. You should've washed it out as soon as you had the opportunity." She waved her wand at the wound, performing a silent charm that turned the gaping cut into a well-scabbed sliver of flesh, which stood out against Lupin's pale arm.

Very slowly, Lupin looked down at his newly healed arm. Then he lifted his eyes to Hermione, eyes that were dry, but bloodshot from strain. He didn't seem to recognize her for a moment, and then, in a tone of complete disbelief, he said, "You came back."

"Yeah," said Hermione, wondering why her voice was so hoarse. "Didn't I tell you that I wasn't going to let you just sit around here and feel sorry for yourself?"

"I tried to eat you," Lupin reminded her.

Hermione smiled, shrugging, and, at the same time forcing back the memory of how absolutely terrifying that experience had been. "You did do that," she admitted. "It's okay. I forgive you."

"Did I…hurt you?" Lupin was running his eyes over her arms and face, trying to catch a glimpse of any injury that he hadn't previously noticed. "I didn't get you at all, then?" An intense relief spread over his face at Hermione's nod. "Thank god. Thank…thank god." He shook himself, some of the color returning to his face. "And Harry? Harry's all right?"

"Harry's fine," Hermione insisted. "We're both just fine. Harry's going to the Burrow to draw the Ministry officials off on a false scent, so that you and I can get out of here. And next time, I promise I'll be more careful, Professor. We'll get you some of that wolfsbane before we do anything else."

"Please," Lupin said, putting up a hand in a gesture of some protest. "Don't…don't call me Professor. I haven't been your Professor in a long time. You can dispense with the formality."

"I'll try," said Hermione ruefully.

"Good." Lupin nodded at her as he rose to his feet. Taking a look around the room at the destruction he'd caused, he shook his head, and seemed to want to put it from his mind. Turning back to Hermione, he took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. "Thank you, Hermione. I'm more in your debt than you might realize. Now I really will get that time to live that you were so adamant about."

Hermione wanted to say "Don't mention it," but she found herself lost for words. Her insides had begun churning as she felt the touch of his lips against her hand, and she hoped that her face didn't look as red as it felt hot to her. Somehow, no words seemed quite sufficient, and even if she'd wanted them, she knew she probably couldn't have come up with any.

For some reason, she realized, Lupin hadn't made any move to start downstairs again. She didn't feel too eager to stray from this spot herself, but rather imagined that she'd enjoy standing there, letting him hold her hand just like that for as long as he pleased. The warm feeling in her face had begun to spread down the arm that Lupin had hold of, and was taking hold of her entire body, so that she had to make a concerted effort to keep herself from swaying on the spot.

Lupin finally broke eye contact, and made as if to turn from her, but Hermione held him fast, refusing to let go of his hand. He opened his mouth to speak, his eyes kind, grateful, and understanding. She couldn't' stand that understanding, because she knew that he didn't' understand, that he couldn't possibly really understand what was going on in her head. At the same time, she desperately wanted him to, wanted to believe that he could, and was totally incapable of convincing herself that he would.

"We should-!" he began, but she leaned in and pressed her lips to his before he had a chance to finish the sentence. She couldn't tell who was more startled by the action, Lupin or herself, and she felt him stiffen, his hand going rigid in hers. She wrapped one arm around his shoulders, afraid that he would pull away, and embarrassed, at the same time, that he might linger there simply to indulge her. Just as she was beginning to feel as though the only possible way to salvage what had happened was to pull away and make a run for the downstairs landing, Lupin's arm was around her waist, and he was returning the kiss, hesitantly, but warmly, and urgently.

His tousled hair fell into her eyes as she kissed him, and he reached up to cup her face with the palm of his hand. His hand felt rough, and torn against her face, and she spent a moment wondering if he'd cut that, too, during his rampage. His touch was so gentle that he seemed to think he might break her, and she dropped her lips from his, leaning her forehead against his chest, feeling that the rise and fall of his chest had sped up, so that his heart seemed to be beating at an alarming rate. Or, Hermione wondered, was that her own heart? How odd, she thought, that she couldn't seem to tell.

"I could have killed you," Lupin said gently, breaking the amazing reverie that had arisen between them. "I wouldn't have known the difference between you and anyone else. I would have torn you apart. I can't live knowing that-!"

"But you didn't'," insisted Hermione, "you didn't do any of those things. You don't' have to think about it. Don't bother. It doesn't matter anymore."

"It always matters," whispered Lupin, in a hollow voice.

Hermione couldn't say that it didn't matter to her. She couldn't tell him that it didn't bother her, that it was of no consequence, because that wouldn't be true. She'd learned the previous night that she was, in fact, very attached to her own life, and she couldn't quite convince herself that there was no harm in Lupin's being a werewolf. That would be stupid, and no matter how many mistakes she might make in this case, she wasn't stupid.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," she said, under her breath. To her surprise and pleasure, Lupin chuckled.

"If this is what you meant by 'living my life,'" he added, after a moment, "then I'm starting to see your point." She grinned at him, expecting to see an answering smile on his face, but Lupin wasn't smiling. His laughter had faded, and he was looking distracted and morose again. Frustrated, Hermione tried to think of how she could reanimate him, but he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, stopping her from speaking. "No, don't," he told her, "don't try. You can't always heal me so easily." He gestured at his arm.

Hermione wished desperately that she could.

* * *

"We'll need to get you some proper wizard's robes," Hermione was saying, as she rummaged through the drawers of her armoire, back on Beulah Street. "If you walk around in muggle clothes all the time, it'll be more than a giveaway."

"I didn't think I'd be walking around at all, Lupin reminded her, raising an eyebrow.

Hermione shrugged that off impatiently. "Well, no," she agreed, "no, not for the moment. Once we get you cleared, of course, you'll need something to wear, or else people will stare. You had some at the theater, didn't you?"

"We're not going back to the theater." There was no uncertainty in Lupin's tone that time. "I slept on the premises, so all of my things are there, yes, but I'm sure if anyone finds them when they're cleaning out my dressing room, they'll just assume they're part of the costume."

"Probably so." Hermione agreed. "That's convenient. I hadn't really considered that."

"And," added Lupin, "I'm convicted as a wizard, but no one's trying to arrest me as a muggle."

"But you did disappear, and they will be trying to find you. It's really the same danger either way, because if the muggles announce that they've found you again, that'll get to the Ministry's ears in no time."

Hermione gave up on that train of thought, and closed the drawer with a snap. Taking a look, appraising look at Lupin, she frowned, crossing her arms over her chest in thought. "Well, all right. Robes aside, then, we need wolfsbane, and quickly.

"We could make it," suggested Lupin, "but it takes too long to be effective after you've brewed it. It wouldn't be ready in time, and…"

"And we aren't going to have that again," Hermione cut him off, trying to sound totally unconcerned. "So, where have you been getting it? How about that instant stuff, that you were taking in the theater?"

Lupin sighed. "I made it myself, months ago. I was just in the process of brewing some more, when this all blew up in our faces."

Guiltily, Hermione realized that he'd been about to say "when you came along," as it had been her that had started the chain of events which led to his discovery. But, she reminded herself, that was obviously of no consequence now. Blame could be placed later. For the moment, she needed to find a way to come by some wolfsbane potion, and she only had a couple of day's leisure in which to do so.

Frustrated, she gave Lupin a look that was half-apologetic, half forcedly-hopeful. To her surprise, he as regarding her steadily, clearly thinking hard about something. "I don't suppose," he asked hesitantly, "you still have that time-turner, do you? I know exactly how to make the potion. The only problem is having enough _time _for it to mature."

"Oh!" Hermione couldn't think if she did still have the instrument, but she didn't remember getting rid of it, either. "It must be around…somewhere. I'll look for it." She held up her wand, and said, very loudly and clearly, so that she could have been heard throughout the whole house, "Accio time-turner!"

Almost immediately, she could hear a whirring sound coming from the attic. It seemed to take the time-turner several moments to negotiate the cramped space, but, before long, it whizzed down the stairwell towards her, flying forward at such a speed that she made a hasty grab for it to prevent it from crashing into a wall and smashing to bits. As soon as she closed her hand around it, the little golden hourglass stopped buzzing, and fell against her palm, inanimate again. Extremely pleased with her success she held the time-turner out towards Lupin, grinning more confidently than she had since they'd returned from Grimmauld Place. "So, how long does the potion take?"


	12. The Argument of Time

**Chapter Twelve: The Argument of Time**

What Hermione hadn't counted on was the mess that went into the brewing of wolfsbane. She came out of the living room, where she'd been collecting the odd ingredient from her storage closet, to find Lupin standing over a huge cauldron, his sleeves rolled up around his elbows, pouring over a mixture that looked nothing remotely like the drink that she'd seen him take in the Townsend theater.

"Any luck?" She asked, dropping a small pile of roots and animal tails on to the table next to him. Lupin shot a quick, searching glance at the assortment before turning his attention back to the cauldron.

"Well," he started, "it's…coming." Frowning with concentration, he snatched an extra-long, curly possum tail from the table, and dropped it into the mixture, which gave off a strangely sweet smell, and made a noise that was a cross between a burble and a squeal. "I'm still missing the fruit-bat fangs, and-! Ah…" With the addition of the possum tail, the potion turned a much more promisingly putrid green. "Yes, the fangs, and the Puffskein juice."

"Puffskein juice?" Hermione wrinkled her nose, trying not to breath in the overpowering odor of the stuff. "What on earth would I have puffskein juice lying around for?"

"Oh," murmured Lupin, conversationally. "I thought you were used to this sort of thing; taken in escaped werewolves. Honestly, I thought that you'd have been a little bit more prepared." He grinned at her, and that she got a twinge of that warm feeling that she'd come to associate with Lupin's presence. "It's all right, I'm sure you'll think of something."

Although she smiled back at his teasing, Hermione couldn't think of how she was going to come by puffskein juice. "Unless you can think of how to summon some to us without my leaving the house, we might be in a tight spot," she reminded him. "I don't' even know where one would buy puffskein juice. It's not a popular product."

"You get puffskein juice by squeezing puffskeins," Lupin informed her, unnecessarily. Hermione was silent for several moments, as she tried to figure out why he'd found that comment helpful. Then, as realization dawned, her face screwed involuntarily up into a mask of disgust. "Well, that's how you get it," insisted Lupin, complacently.

"I am not squeezing a puffskein." That, Hermione knew, was not in question. The very idea of taking one of those precious creatures and squeezing the juice out of it made her feel the need to gag. "You can do it. I…that's just disgusting."

"If you insist." Reaching up, Lupin pulled several silvering hairs out of his scalp, and deposited them on top of the green liquid in the cauldron. The mixture hissed appreciatively, and he began to stir it with a large copper ladle that Hermione had provided him with from her own kitchen supplies. Watching him inserting the ladle into the green mass, Hermione told herself that she would never, for any reason, eat off of it ever again. "You might check under the sofas for puffskein nests. They like to live in places like that. Although, you keep this house so clean that we might be out of luck entirely."

Dutifully, Hermione ascended the stairs again, and headed for the attic, where she'd been keeping the time turner. It was the only place in the house that she hadn't cleaned in long enough that there might be something living up there. In fact, it was for that very reason that she hadn't cleaned it. She'd been torn between not wanting to find out what kind of unpleasant creatures were sharing her attic, and not wanting to disturb them.

She almost allowed herself to believe, after she'd checked under several stools and unused cabinets, that her suspicions had been unfounded. There didn't appear to be any sign of a puffskein, snake, or any other creature. It was only when she pushed aside the armchair that had once belonged to her great grandmother that Hermione discovered the two sleeping fuzzballs that were unmistakably puffskeins. They were also absolutely adorable, and Hermione bit back a sob as she thought about what would happen to them when she brought them downstairs. Should she bring them both, so that the one that lived wouldn't get lonely? Or should she spare the one and feed the other one to Lupin's potion?

With a great effort, Hermione willed herself to grab one of the puffskeins, which she carried down the stairs by the foot. It squealed and struggled in her grasp, and several times she almost dropped it but managed to hang on to it until she'd reached the kitchen again. Looking up at the sound of her approach, Lupin saw the creature she was holding, and deftly relieved her of it. He stepped out of the room with his quarry, and Hermione tried to shut her ears to the sound of the creature's terrified squeak, before it's life was apparently cut short.

When he returned to the kitchen, Lupin didn't look as stoic as he had when he'd left. He gave Hermione a very mournful look, glancing down at his hands and grimacing. "Sorry," he muttered, "but I don't think we have time to figure out another way to get one."

Somewhat relieved that he'd been affected by strangling the puffskein as well, Hermione shook her head. "Let's just not think about it," she assured him. "What else did you say you needed?"

"Fruit bat fangs," Lupin reiterated. "But I think that these," and he pulled a pair of blunted, unthreatening animal teeth from Hermione's pile of potion ingredients, "are probably what I'm looking for. It's hard to tell by looking."  
"They're not vampire bat fangs," she said, frowning. "Although the box I had upstairs wasn't labeled, so I can't be entirely sure. I think they may have been a…gift, of sorts, from Fred and George, when the Weasleys were all over last Christmas.

The knowledge that the fangs had come from the infamous prankster twins did not seem to fill Lupin with confidence, but he crossed his fingers and dropped the fangs into the cauldron. As soon as he did so, the entire thing smoked for a moment, and then settled again. Hermione could see through the green mist that was now percolating through the room that the potion was just a few shades lighter than the finished wolfsbane potion should be.

"Now it just needs to sit," Lupin announced, brushing his hands off against his trouser legs. "For six months."

Hermione did a few mental calculations, and then lifted the time turner, which she'd strung around her neck for safe keeping. "Six months it is," she said, turning and turning the hourglass, counting carefully all the while, so as not to come short, or overstep the time. "Come over here, quickly!"

Lupin hurried over to her, and she grasped his arm just as she gave the device a final turn. As the scene around her began to warp, she saw Lupin reaching out to grab the bowl of newly-finished wolfsbane, even as the table beneath it mysteriously covered itself in dirty dishes. One of the chairs disappeared, and reappeared at the far end of the room, just under the window. Outside the window, it began to rain. Then, after a few moments, everything seemed to have settled into it's proper place.

Hermione took the cauldron from Lupin, and dragged it over to the far end of the room, where she placed it up against a wall, in a corner that was so rarely used that there was no chance of the mixture being stepped into or overturned accidentally. "Well," she said, more to herself than to Lupin, "that takes care of that, I suppose."

She returned to his side, and, feeling his arm loop around her hips, she began to turn the time turner back, again being careful to make sure that she only rotated the thing exactly as many times as she'd done so a few moments before. The chair came away from the window, and reappeared next to the table. All of the dirty dishes that had been clogging the surface seemed to evaporate, and the rain ceased abruptly. The cauldron, however, remained miraculously where it was, and Hermione silently thanked her lucky stars that it had been that easy, just this once.

Lupin walked over to the cauldron, and cast a curious eye into the mixture within it. "Looks brilliant," he said, his eyes dancing as he gestured to Hermione to join him. "Actually, I think we've learned a marketable potion-making skill. We should tell your Fred and George about it, I'm sure they could make it work for them somehow."

Lupin was right, decided Hermione, following him to gaze into the cauldron. The potion did indeed look appropriately vile. Reaching up, she opened a cabinet above their heads, and placed the cauldron in it, pushing it far into the back, and closing the doors around it.

"I don't suggest we tell Fred and George about this," she replied belatedly, once she'd put the potion carefully away. "Time turners are still illegal, after all, and that wouldn't stop them from giving it a try if they thought it was worth doing. I'd rather not be the one to encourage them."

"We've done so many illegal things in one day, "Lupin shrugged, "why stop now? Even if two wrongs don't make a right."

As she reached her arms up to twine them around his neck, Hermione decided that she'd never been so satisfied with the results of an illegal activity before. She wasn't exactly ready to believe that law-breaking was the key to success, but she probably wouldn't ever feel too terribly guilty about this particular instance. Lupin leaned in and kissed her, his fingers tightening against her waist, and she leaned into him, closing her eyes in pleasure.

"We have to decide what we're going to do now," Lupin said, after they'd hung together in companionable silence for a moment. "You and I both know that Harry and Ginny can't keep the Ministry distracted forever, and it won't take them long to lose interest once they've discovered that I'm not lurking in Molly Weasley's pantry.

"We can leave the country," replied Hermione. "We'll go find Ron and Charlie in Romania. Harry'll come too, we'll all go together. They can't follow us forever, and the Ministry's got so much to do that they can't possibly want to chase a man around the globe for playing a couple of tricks on the muggles."

"I didn't just play a couple of tricks, Hermione, "Lupin said gently. "I broke some very serious wizarding laws, and those don't only apply to this country. Harry has things to occupy him here, and he won't want to just take off like that. What about Ginny?"

Hermione didn't want to care about Ginny, at this particular moment. She opened her mouth to say that, but, even as she did so, a pang of guilt hit her, and she shook her head. Lupin was right, they couldn't just leave the country, because she didn't feel comfortable leaving Harry Potter alone. It was terribly frustrating, all of a sudden, to have conflicting loyalties to two men, both of whom cared for and appreciated each other, and both of whom needed her. Because Lupin did need her, didn't he? She looked up at him, letting that fantastic realization wash over her as she had so many times already since they'd returned from Grimmauld Place.

"Clever girl," Lupin murmured, "You'll think of something." He didn't seem bothered by how desperately the two of them were playing it by ear, and Hermione found that she wasn't, either. That was foolish, she knew, but she also didn't care. Sometimes, maybe it was acceptable to be just a little bit foolish.

Lupin frowned slightly, cocking his head at her. "What about your book?" he asked, and Hermione was startled to discover that she hadn't thought about the book in days. "You'll never be able to publish it now, not under your name."

Hermione shrugged. "So I'll publish it under someone else's." That stung just a little bit, as she knew full well that, if she and Lupin took flight, she wouldn't be able to publish at all, under any name. She'd been so sure that she wanted to be an author that the book had taken up most of her time and energy for the past several months. Now she was just going to have to let it go, and there was nothing for it. Or, no, she reasoned, perhaps not. Perhaps she could send it to a friend, before she left, and that friend could publish it under their name. Luna, perhaps, who worried for the Quibbler. But then, Hermione hardly wanted her work associated with the gossip magazine…

"Hermione?" Lupin's voice, harsh and alert, broke into her thoughts, and she stared at him, alarmed by this change of manner. He was staring at the fireplace, and Hermione, following his gaze, saw to her horror that a beautiful red-haired head was suspended within it. Ginny called out when Hermione turned to face her, reaching out with one hand as if attempting to reach for Hermione's hand. Then, before she had a chance to speak, she disappeared, thrust back into the fireplace and out of sight, as if someone had pulled her from behind.

Hermione didn't allow the sinking feeling to take hold of her before she'd gripped her wand, thinking fast. Lupin didn't say anything. She saw that he, too, was holding on to his wand, and she nodded, thinking, despite her rising panic, that it would have been nice to have had just a few more quiet moments before they were forced to take flight again.


	13. Breaking Point

**Chapter Thirteen: Breaking Point**

Lupin disappeared first, Hermione following him only a moment later. They came out, one right after another, in the living room of the Burrow, right next to the fireplace. As they arrived, they saw a thick-set, small-eyed man pushing a frantically struggling Ginny away from the fireplace grate, where she'd apparently been attempting to contact them only seconds before.

The scene was a grim one. Seven or eight Ministry wizards, all in the same black robes that Hermione had first seen Blaise Zabini wearing, were standing ranged in a loose semi-circle in the center of the room. At their head was Rufus Scrimgeour, his hand on his wand, facing the man who was manhandling Ginny. A woman next to Scrimgeour hand her hands clamped tightly over Harry Potter's shoulders. It didn't look like a terribly tense grip, but Harry stood stock-still nonetheless, his eyes never leaving Ginny's frantic face.

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but Harry shot her a sharp look, and she couldn't tell what he was trying to get her to do. She raised her eyebrows at him, hoping he'd find a way to clarify, but Harry had turned away, and was now looking quickly between Lupin and Ginny, his chest heaving under the strain of inaction.

It was Lupin who broke the tableau first. Bowing his head, he stepped forward, his wand arm outstretched towards Scrimgeour, but not in a gesture of menace. He let the wand fall from his hand, so that it clattered on to the floorboards at Scrimgeour's feet. The Minister of Magic only looked at it, but didn't make a move to retrieve it.

"All right," said Lupin. "It's over, now. Let him go. You've got what you came for."

Harry shook his head urgently, but Lupin glanced at him, and then looked away. He pushed the wand towards Scrimgeour with his foot, and shoved his hands back into the pockets of his trousers, letting all of the intruding Ministry wizards see and understand his defeat."

"What about her?" asked the woman who was holding Harry, jerking her thumb at Hermione. Scrimgeour, unexpectedly, waited to see Lupin's reaction, before he spoke.

"Well, Remus? What about her?"

Lupin smiled. Hermione felt like she was going to scream, seeing him smiling so placidly, unable to fight back in the face of all of the wizards, well-armed, pointing their wands at her and her friends. "Leave her alone," said Lupin simply, shrugging as if this was perfectly obvious. "What's she got to do with it? You've got no case against her."

"We've got enough," muttered the woman, but Scrimgeour silenced her with a wave of his hand. He nodded at Lupin, and even as he did so, the wizards behind him started to lower their wands. After a moment's hesitation, the woman holding Harry released him as well, giving Hermione a very sour, threatening look as she did so.

"Harry!" Ginny let out a cry of relief, and made as if to run towards him. She managed to free herself from the grasping arms of the man who'd been restraining her, but even as she started forwards, Harry stopped her, speaking in a low, urgent voice.

"Stay where you are, Ginny," he ordered. "Don't come any closer."

Ginny looked puzzled for a moment, her eyes widening at the command. She looked to Hermione for some sort of guidance, but Hermione found that she couldn't spend much energy on Ginny. She had eyes only for Lupin, posed almost casually against the ominous backdrop of the ranked wizards, and for Harry, who was glaring so intensely at Scrimgeour that he was almost spitting fire from his eyes. "Get out of here," Hermione told Ginny, over her shoulder. Ginny shot one more frightened look at Harry, and then turned tail and ran out the back door. Hermione could hear Ginny's footsteps retreating down the street before the door closed behind her, and she was irritated at herself to find that she was relieved that Ginny had gotten away safely. Why should she care about what happened to Ginny at all? Wasn't it she who'd been careless, callous enough to get them into this mess in the first place? No, that wasn't so. Hermione knew that, after all, it had been her own fault.

Well, thought Hermione, Lupin may have given up his wand, but she hadn't. She could see that Harry had come to the same decision, as he was backing away from Scrimgeour and the menacing woman, his wand already pointing direct at Scrimgeour's throat. Hermione took a few quick steps forward, covering the woman with her own wand.

"Don't, Hermione," Lupin said, so softly that it was almost a whisper. "Put your wand away. You too, Harry. Back down, now. I don't want you to get hurt."

"We're not children, Remus," Harry snarled. "You can't keep us from getting hurt this time."

Strangely, Lupin laughed softly, raising one hand in a gesture of resignation. "You're right, Harry," he agreed, "and you're not a child anymore. But you're wrong about one thing. I can stop you from getting hurt. What good would I be if I couldn't do that much?"

It happened slowly, almost leisurely, so that Hermione was caught entirely off guard by the casual way in which Lupin executed the maneuver. Bending down, he picked up his wand from the ground, and turned on Harry. The incantation was silent, but a green flash of light shot out of the tip of Lupin's wand, and Harry's own wand went flying out of his hand. When Harry rushed to retrieve it, Lupin said, aloud this time, "petrificus totalus," and Harry went rigid, then slammed to the ground on his back. Hermione had one incredulous glimpse of Lupin turning to point his wand at her, now. There was an emotion in his eyes that she couldn't understand, something between horror and relief as he whispered, "stupefy."

Hermione's consciousness slipped away, and she crumpled into a heap. The last thing she remembered seeing was the surprised and somewhat wary expression on Rufus Scrimgeour's face, and Lupin's half-closed, exhausted eyes.

* * *

There was something freezing cold on Hermione's face, rousing her from her sleep. Her sleep? Hermione shook herself, trying to open her eyes, wondering what it was she'd been doing, sleeping. She couldn't move her eyelids, as something was pressing down on them heavily, almost painfully. Reaching up, she shoved the cold cloth off of her face, taking a deep breath. Her face stung, as though she'd been struck. When could she possibly have been struck?

"Hermione?" Ginny's voice was steadier than it had been, but faint, and listless. The sound of her name woke Hermione completely, and she shook her head, forcing herself to focus on the face swimming in front of her.

She tried to sit up, but winced. Her face still smarted terribly. Ginny, apparently noticing Hermione's grimace, sucked in a breath, "I'm sorry, I' sorry," she whispered, "I had to hit you. You wouldn't lie down, you wouldn't stay quiet, you kept yelling and screaming, and Harry said that I had to keep you quiet, and I…I'm sorry…does it hurt?"

"Why…would I be screaming?" Hermione was trying very hard to understand. Her head was heavy, it felt like it was filled with lead. Ginny couldn't possibly have knocked her out by hitting her. How had she gotten on to the floor?

"You don't remember?" Ginny sounded unsure. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Hermione thought very hard about that. She ran through the most recent events that she could think of, attempting to put them into the proper order. She and Lupin had been together on the stairwell at Grimmauld Place. She'd been finding the time turner for him. Then he'd squeezed a puffskein. She'd hated that, it had made her so sad. But something else had happened since then. Something about Ginny, and Ginny's hand in the fire.

Abruptly, it all came flooding back, and Hermione lurched upwards from the ground. Lupin was gone, she knew, and he'd stunned her. She'd been screaming because she was trying to reach him. Had they taken him?

"Where's Remus?" she asked, her voice cracking in her haste to get the words out. "Where's Scrimgeour? Where's…Harry?"

"He's outside," stammered Ginny, "H-Harry, I mean. He's out on the step."

Hermione struggled to her feet, swaying slightly as she willed herself to regain her bearings, her control. Harry would know what to do. She just had to get outside and find him, and together, they would come up with a plan. Forcing herself to cling to that thought, she paced unsteadily through the living room, until she found herself out again in the sunlight, standing in front of the Burrow.

Molly and Arthur Weasley were already there, sitting on either side of Harry, their arms around his shoulders. They were murmuring encouraging, fortifying things to him, but Harry just sat there, looking ahead of him, taking deep, slow breaths, as if steeling himself.

Molly Weasley saw Hermione first. She stood up and ran forward, gathering Hermione into her arms and pressing her to her chest. "Hermione, darling," she said, "You're all right? What's happened to your face?"

"I'm fine," she said. She knew, even as she said it, that it wasn't true.

As she moved forward past Molly, Arthur Weasley stepped aside somewhat, so that Hermione could seat herself next to Harry. She saw Arthur and Molly exchanging concerned looks over her shoulder.

"I told her not to call him," Harry said, apologetically. "I told her not to call you. We would have been all right. They didn't want us, they weren't after us. They would have let us go. They didn't know where you were. It was going to be all right."

Hermione imagined how Ginny must have felt, standing there, watching the Ministry wizards menacing Harry, threatening to take him to Azkaban. She knew exactly what that was like, now, and she didn't blame Ginny for reacting desperately, instinctively. Hermione would have done the same thing, without question. Ginny had done the best thing that she'd thought to do at the time.

"Did they hurt you?" Hermione asked. Harry shook his head.

"No," he growled, and she got the feeling that Harry almost wished they had, so that he'd at least have something to show for it all. "Not a scratch."

"Ginny's all right," she added, firmly. "Ginny's just fine."

"I know that Ginny's fine." The coldness in his voice was almost tangible. Hermione decided not to try to speak to him again.

Harry didn't move for what must have been at least an hour. He was thinking very hard, very steadily about something, and Hermione didn't want to interrupt him. Instead, she sat at his elbow, watching his eyes, waiting for him to formulate his new plan, to tell her what they were going to do, and what he needed from her. Once he got his composure back, she knew that he was going to tell her.

"I don't know what you're waiting for, Hermione," muttered Harry, after the longest time. "I really am a broken man, after all, aren't I?"

Hermione couldn't understand how Ginny had allowed herself to express those thoughts to him. She'd been sure that Ginny hadn't told him that she'd felt that way. "You're not a broken man," she insisted, shaking him by the arm. "You're whole, and you're wonderful. You're my hero, remember?"

"No I'm not," Harry muttered. He didn't say anything else. He just sat there, and refused to listen to anything that Hermione tried to say.

Finally, she stopped trying. Harry wasn't moving, wasn't listening, wasn't even thinking anymore. He wasn't doing anything, she realized. He'd given up.

"I never believed that you were damaged before, Harry," she whispered, the bitterness evident in her voice despite her attempt to control herself. "But I guess if you've admitted it to yourself, then who am I to disagree?"

She didn't stop to see if she'd evoked a response. Hermione stood up, and walked right past Arthur and Molly, back into the house where Remus had disappeared only a short while ago. She wasn't broken, yet. She refused to give up.


	14. Prevention Procedures

**Chapter Fourteen: Prevention Procedures**

Once, a long time ago, when Hermione had needed help, she'd gone first to Harry and Ron. Ron was unreachable now, spending the year in Romania with Charlie and his dragons. Harry had failed her, and she recognized with a pang that she couldn't spend the rest of her life depending on him.

When she'd been at school, her second lifeline had been the DA. Of all of the people who'd once been interested in being members of "Dumbledore's Army," only a few of them were still in touch with Hermione. Cho Chang, having experimented briefly with a career as a professional quidditch player, now performed broomstick displays, interviews, and spectacular advertisements for newly-opened "Madam Medea's Broom Emporium," just outside of the village of Hogsmeade. Ernie Macmillan, bizarrely enough, taught muggle elementary school, a life choice that Hermione had never quite been able to understand.

The only two former DA members with whom she felt particularly close, however, other than Harry and Ron, were Neville Longbottom, and Luna Lovegood. They'd been living together ever since the war, but it seemed to Hermione that both of them were just a little too spacey to have ever pinned down a date for a wedding. They were a completely harmonious couple, mutually dependent in a way that humiliated neither of them, and Hermione often found herself smiling while she watched Luna pulling out a chair for the clumsy Neville, or Neville laying a protective hand on the dreamy Luna while they were crossing a street together.

Anyone who didn't know them as well as Hermione did might not see them as the most reliable and useful people to turn to in a time of crisis. Hermione knew better, and she thanked her lucky stars that they lived so close by, as she knelt down in front of the fireplace at the Burrow. Tossing a pinch of floo powder into the fireplace, she called out "Luna? Are you home?"

Luna's large, half-lidded eyes appeared, and she smiled distractedly at Hermione, giving her a little wave. "Well, hello, Hermione. What a pleasant surprise. Neville and I were just hoping that you'd call us. We've got so much to tell you." Lowering her voice, she glanced behind her, although Hermione couldn't tell if there was anyone else in the room on Luna's end. "It's about Ginny," she whispered.

"Yes," murmured Hermione, ruefully. "Actually, I knew about that. Thanks. But, I had a question for you. Can I come over?"

"Ooh, certainly." Luna's smile broadened, and Hermione was gratified by the pleasure that Luna took in the prospect of her company. "You're always welcome. I'll just tell Neville, he's upstairs. Did you want to come over now?"

"Now would be wonderful," Hermione replied.

* * *

Luna waited, still on her knees by the fireplace, as Hermione used a little extra floo powder to get herself through the floo network and into Luna's spacious library. When Hermione had first seen the room that Neville had helped to create for Luna on her twentieth birthday, Hermione had been taken aback, dazzled by the sheer quantity of books that lined every wall of the place. Upon further inspection, however, Hermione had discovered that these weren't the usual magical tomes and reference books, but were rather a gigantic collection of pieces of myth and questionable wizarding lore, the reading of which was Luna's favorite pastime. Despite the unorthodox character of the library, it was still, Hermione admitted to herself, a very beautiful room.

Neville also kept a magnificent garden, filled with various plants that required constant care and patience only he would be willing to give. Hermione could see the flowering shrubs and bushes through the large library windows. Hermione had long ago promised herself that if she ever succeeded in becoming a successful, published author, she'd get herself a house like this one. "So," began Luna, beaming at Hermione as the latter crawled, somewhat sooty, out of the fireplace. "You've come to ask me about Remus Lupin."

Hermione blinked. She wasn't quite used to Luna's uncanny habit of getting it right on the first try, but it certainly saved her the trouble of having to explain everything.

"Well," Luna said, seeing that Hermione made no protest, "Obviously the first thing that we have to do is to come up with a plan to break him out of Azkaban." Her eyes danced as she said this, and she giggled. "That's exciting. I can't think of anyone besides Sirius Black who's ever done something like that."

That was hardly an encouraging thought. Hermione tried not to dwell on how difficult it would be to free Lupin, if he was actually convicted and sent to the wizard prison. Of course, she reminded herself, there wasn't much chance that he wouldn't be convicted, as he'd all but made a full confession already, and she couldn't think of what he'd come up with by way of an alibi. Maybe Luna was thinking about it the right way. Still, an Azkaban release was a terribly daunting task, and Hermione knew they should at least start a little bit smaller.

"I think," said Hermione carefully, "we should probably start by figuring out what we can do for the trial."

Luna shrugged. "If you like," she agreed, readily enough. "Are we going to spring him before he gets to court, then?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of coming up with a very powerful defense," replied Hermione.

Luna seemed to ponder that for a moment, looking even more lost in her own thoughts than she usually was. After a moment, she shook her head decisively, and turned earnest eyes back to Hermione, "No," she said simply, "Honestly, I don't think there's really that much to defend. He doesn't have a case."

"Luna's right," called Neville, who bustled into the room at that moment, frowning in thought. "I don't think there's anything we can do for Remus on that score."

"Then what can we do?" Hermione was starting to feel desperate. First Harry had backed out on her, and now Luna and Neville were telling her that they didn't think there was anything they could do. Was there anyone who could come up with a valid idea to rescue Lupin?

"Unless…" Luna trailed off, biting her nails pensively. Hermione waited, hoping that the other woman would elaborate. When Luna showed no signs of sharing, Hermione coughed hopefully, and Luna shook her head. "I once heard that, a very long time ago, someone in the ministry wanted to prevent a crime from ever having happened."

"We can't use the time-turner," Hermione told her, releasing the hopeful breath that she'd been holding. "It's too risky, and if the ministry got wind of it, we'd be in even more trouble, and in less of a position to help."

"That's not what I said," insisted Luna. "We're not going to go back in time to prevent the crime. We're just going to destroy the memory of the crime. If no one remembers the crime ever having happened, then it might as well not ever _have_ happened, don't you think?"

"But," protested Hermione, "modifying wizard memories is one of the things that Remus is being convicted of, anyway. We're not helping him by adding to the crime."

"Do you want," asked Luna, more gently than Hermione would have expected from her, "to get him safely home, or not?" Hermione did. She wanted it very badly. She couldn't think of anything else that she had ever wanted as badly as she wanted this.

"You say it's been done in the past?" she asked, still doubtful. "What was the punishment, when the wizards who did the memory modification got caught?"

"I don't remember," murmured Luna, unperturbed. "It was only a few weeks ago, I think. I read about it in the papers. I don't suppose they've been punished, not yet."

Hermione shot Neville a questioning look. Neville shrugged. "I don't know," he said, "but even if it hasn't been done before, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

* * *

Hermione, Neville, and Luna agreed to meet in their library again the next morning. In the meantime, Hermione decided, she'd do some research on what happened when powerful memory charms went awry.

Taking her leave of Neville and Luna, she couldn't quite find the words to express just how grateful she was for their wholehearted, unquestioning encouragement. When she left their library, she felt better, at least as though she was really doing something concrete.

For some reason, she'd half-expected to see Harry waiting for her when she returned home, full of apologies new vigor, and promises of assistance. There was no one there, however, and Hermione told herself firmly that Harry, exhausted from his defeat, was probably under the forcedly tender ministrations of his in-laws at this very moment. She couldn't help a twinge of disappointment, however, when, as the hours passed, there was still no sign of her friend.

Putting him firmly from her mind, Hermione started to leaf through her own bookshelves, looking for anything that might give her an overview of the history of obliviation. There were many books on how to perform memory charms, and numerous references to when a memory modification was or was not illegal. She had a great deal of trouble, however, referencing any situation in which someone had documented the effects of a charm gone wrong, or of a person suffering the consequences of breaking those laws. No doubt, thought Hermione darkly, whoever had that information had his or her memory wiped, and wouldn't be in any state to tell the tale.

She remembered something that Lupin had said, just the day before, about sinking so far into crime that they might as well continue down that path. Had it really only been the day before that she'd been starting to feel like they might have a future together? The experience had been so short-lived that now she felt as thought it had been all in her head, a dream that she'd entertained for just a little bit too long, and that she now couldn't differentiate from reality. She'd started out by telling Lupin that he needed to return with her, because Harry needed him, because Harry was lonely. She'd convinced Lupin that Lupin himself was too lonely, too reclusive, and that he needed to come and live his life. Now it was Hermione who felt more lonely than she could possibly have imagined. Or had she really felt this way all along, and was only now realizing it because of the loss of hat newfound companionship?

Determined to find something that would help her understand the consequences of her actions, Hermione poured over her books long into the night. She wished that Luna's assurances had been convincing, but as much as Hermione liked and admired the woman, she could never be foolish enough to take Luna at face value. Neville himself had seemed a bit unsure, and he usually understood Luna better than the rest of them did. If Hermione didn't find something, she told herself, she wouldn't follow through with the plan. She couldn't put her two noble friends into the position of being carted off to Azkaban with her.

And even if they did decide that memory charms were the best way to handle the situation, Hermione pondered, how would the three of tem get in to the ministry at all? She herself was known to be Lupin's accomplice, and no one would let her near anyone in the Ministry, not with her wand, at any rate. Neville and Luna weren't suspected of anything, but they hardly spent a lot of time lurking around the Ministry of Magic. They'd have to have some valid reason to be there, if they wanted to get close enough to Ministry officials to perform spells.

A flash of green out of the corner of her eye caught Hermione's attention, and she looked up from the huge and utterly useless book she'd been studying on The Ways of the Magical World – Laws and Practices of Old. The cabinet above the stove had drifted slightly open, andthe light from the kitchen window was glinting off of the repulsively shiny green wolfsbane potion.

It was then that Hermione knew how Neville and Luna were going to get into the Ministry. She was surprised that it had taken her so long to think of it. After all, a rampaging werewolf in the Ministry of Magic would never do, and she happened to have a full, well-matured supply of wolfsbane potion at hand. She'd just have to see that :Lupin got the stuff, and that someone she knew brought it to him.


	15. The Visit

**Chapter Fifteen: The Visit**

"Did you find anything?" asked Luna, when she, Neville, and Hermione were again sitting on the carpet in front of her library fireplace. "We couldn't' seem to find that article that I was telling you about, but I'm sure it's around somewhere in this house…"

"No time for that," muttered Hermione, shaking her head. The truth was, she hadn't found a thing, despite a very long all-nighter's worth of research. She wanted very much to believe that her not having discovered a thing on the punishments for misuse of obliviation was a positive thing, but she hadn't really convinced herself of that.

Luna, at least, wasn't put off. "Well, that's all right," she assured Hermione, smiling. "I'm sure we can work it out."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Hermione tried to sound resolute, purposeful. Looking around at Luna's placidly confident face, and then at Neville's eagerly hopeful one, she realized that they weren't having that much trouble believing. It disturbed her that they were taking her plan so completely at face value. Trust was one thing, but blind, careless loyalty was something else, and it made her feel distinctly guilty.

Neville had a book open on his lap, his toad, Trevor, perched on top of it, soiling the pages with toad-mucus. Neville, not seeming to care about the mess, gently pushed Trevor off on to the carpet beside her, so that he could get a better look at the volume. "So," he said, "I'm supposed to take the potion up to the visitor's entrance, and tell them that I'm coming to deliver something to the accused."

"Right," said Hermione. "and

Luna-!"

"I know," murmured Luna. "I'm going to pretend to get lost and end up on the wrong floor, near the Department of Mysteries."

"When Neville starts to leave the trial," finished Hermione, "he's going to say that he's lost you, and worry that you've wandered off somewhere dangerous. Hopefully, he'll convince some of the Ministry officials attending the trial to accompany him, and once they're out of sight of the courtroom…" She trailed off, shrugging. "They'll have forgotten everything by the time they come back, right?"

"Right!" Luna nodded emphatically.

Neville thrust the book he'd been glancing over towards Hermione. "I've been looking up invisibility charms," he said, "and I was thinking that maybe if you used one of them, you could come with us."

"Wouldn't make a difference, in the Ministry," Hermione informed him, frustrated by the restriction even as she voiced it. "Any invisibility charms that you've got on…well…vanish, if you'll excuse the pun, once you get inside the Ministry of Magic. It'd ruin the entire thing. I can't come."

Neville gaped at her, uncomprehending. "You…you can't come? But, this was all your idea in the first place! You're the one who knows exactly what we're supposed to do, and you're the one that-!"

"We'll be fine, Neville." Luna reached over and patted him on the shoulder, in an almost maternal way. "Don't you worry. Hermione will stay here by the fire so that we can reach her by floo powder if anything goes horribly wrong."

Hermione sighed. She'd already agreed to this, had already accepted the fact that she wouldn't be able to come along to Lupin's trial. It had taken a great deal of personal control for her to come to terms with the fact that there was absolutely no way of her being in attendance, and she was worried that, if the plan fell through completely, she couldn't even be there to see him off. But that, of course, wouldn't happen. There wouldn't be any need to see him off. She wouldn't allow herself to entertain that thought.

A hiss and a puff of soot alerted them all to the fact that someone was emerging from the fireplace. All three of them looked up to see Ginny Weasley crawling on hands and knees out towards them, her face closed, uncertain. Neville let out a little cry of pleasure, and then turned sharply to see how Hermione was taking Ginny's unexpected arrival.

Stifling the flood of irrational disgust she experienced upon seeing the red-headed girl, Hermione composed her face into as blank a mask as she could muster. She waited until Ginny had reached the place where the three of them sat before speaking, and she was glad to hear that her voice didn't shake with the suppressed aggression that she felt towards Harry's wife. "Hello, Ginny. How's Harry?"

Ginny blinked, and Hermione got the sense that Ginny had expected a storm of abuse and anger that hadn't come. "He's all right," she said, biting her lip, and shifting her eyes to Luna's for a moment. "I asked him to come with me, but he didn't say anything."

"Oh," replied Hermione, feeling hollow inside. "Well. I'm glad he's doing all right. Can we help you with something?"

"No, you can't." Ginny shook her head emphatically. "I came to help you wit something." At Hermione's questioning glance, she stammered "Luna told me about…about what you all were planning, and I just sort of thought…" she swallowed, and then held out a shimmering piece of fabric. Hermione didn't need to hear Ginny's explanation to know what the garment was, as she'd seen it many times, and worn it a fair few besides. "It's Harry's invisibility cloak," she started, looking hopeful. "I thought…maybe you could use it. To get inside the Ministry."

Hermione accepted the cloak as Ginny thrust it into her hands, and ran her fingers over the folds, her heart lightening considerably in her chest as she involuntarily began to think of how easily this would help her get to see Lupin again. "Does Harry know you have this?" Ginny shook her head, but quickly changed her frown to a look of stoic defiance.

"It's all my fault," she said, simply. "I have to make it right."

No one said anything for a little while, as Ginny looked hopefully up at Hermione, begging her with her eyes for some sort of forgiveness. Hermione realized that she didn't want to forgive Ginny, that blaming Ginny gave her a very easy outlet for all of the self-guilt that she'd been trying not to entertain since she'd first realized that her discovery of Lupin couldn't possibly come to any good. For all of Ginny's faults and foibles, she was sitting there now, offering to get herself potentially arrested and locked away for the sake of helping out a friend who she clearly felt she'd wronged. There was a lot of good in Ginny.

"Right," said Hermione. "Thanks, Ginny. Why don't you just sit down here next to Neville and we'll explain everything. Unless Luna's already taken care of that."

Ginny obediently joined them, and Hermione re-iterated the plan again. "You'll go with Neville, then," she informed Ginny, "and bring the wolfsbane in to the courtroom. We can't have both you and Luna getting lost, not with your dad working at the Ministry. That'd be a bit too suspicious." To Neville, she added, "and make sure that that everyone in the courtroom knows just how soon the next full moon is. You need a leg to stand on, to look like you've got really good reason to be so eager to bring the stuff to them before they put him away."

"Has everyone performed an obliviation spell before?" Ginny asked. Hermione nodded. Neville did too, but Luna looked hesitant.

"She's never had to," admitted Neville, with a sheepish smile. "I forget everything without any help from her…so it hasn't really been so important to learn."

* * *

Early the next morning, Neville, Luna, and Ginny were standing at the visitor's entrance to the Ministry of magic, exchanging nervous looks as they stared into the all-too-unassuming muggle telephone box. Hermione hovered a little ways behind them, swathed completely in the invisibility cloak. She kept glancing down to make sure that the cloak that she, Harry, and Ron had used when they were kids was still sufficiently long to fit completely over her legs.

"Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood, and-!" Neville was saying.

"Shh!" Ginny shot him an irritated look. He swallowed, and nodded, starting over.

"Uh, I mean, yeah, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, and Ginny Weasley, here to deliver an important potion to the trial of Remus Lupin," Neville finished, shooting a glance at Hermione as he did so. She nodded encouragingly, and he turned back to the telephone box again. Luna reached down and squeezed his hand gently, before releasing it to reach for the three visitor's badges that were coming out of the telephone box.

"All visitors," said the voice from the telephone box, "will have to submit to a search upon entry to the Ministry of Magic. We will ask you to turn over your wands for inspection."

Okay, thought Hermione, this will be the test. If I can get through the searchers without being seen, then I can get through the rest of the Ministry unscathed. She nodded at Luna, and Luna stepped up as the telephone box swung forward to admit them. Hermione hurried to catch up with them as they all made their way into the telephone box, and onwards towards into the Ministry hall.

Hermione did not have time to marvel at what a beautiful, exquisitely designed building the Ministry of Magic was. Normally, she liked to stand in the entrance hallway, just ogling the magical ceiling, and the glittering walls. On this occasion, however, she was too busy trying not to lose her nerve as she regarded the tall witch who was relieving Neville of his wand. Ginny tossed a knut into the donation pool as she went, and Hermione wondered if she had made the same wish that Hermione would have made.

The witch ran Neville over with his security wand, and then returned Neville's wand with a curt nod. She took Luna's next, and, having okayed that as well, moved on to Ginny's. All of them passed the test successfully. Hermione all but attached herself to the end of Ginny's robes, as she slid past the security guards, trying not to bump into or rustle against anything in the process.

They split up when they got to the elevator. Luckily for Hermione, there wasn't anyone else in it, and she could relax a little bit, allowing her robes to brush against Neville's without worry. Once inside, Luna waited until the doors closed, and then turned to Ginny. " I'll see you in a little while," she promised the red-head. "Good luck Ginny, good luck, Neville!" Winking at Hermione, she didn't say anything, but Hermione smiled back, feeling a little bit better.

The doors opened outside of the second-level Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Neville, Ginny, and Hermione got out, but Luna remained, waving at them until the elevator doors closed around her again, and the elevator began to travel.

"Come on," whispered Ginny urgently. She bustled Neville forward towards courtroom 1, the largest courtroom in the Ministry, and in fact the only one on this floor. "And don't' drop the wolfsbane, that stuff smells awful."

Hermione had been in courtrooms at the Ministry before, when she and the DA had been to the Ministry of Magic so many years ago, on what they had then called "a rescue mission." This courtroom, however, was even larger, and more austere than the ones that she'd seen on that previous occasion. She wondered why she hadn't known about this room before, and decided that it was the perfection place in which to intimidate and torment a known criminal. If the room itself hadn't been enough to make her feel sick, the arrangement of powerful wizards within it would have done so in it's place.

Rufus Scrimgeour sat near the front of the room, with the nasty-looking witch whom Hermione had met at the burrow seated at his side. The entire Wizengamot was seated near him, and so were his ranks of Ministry henchmen. Every single one of them looked as though they hadn't eaten enough for breakfast that morning, and would be perfectly happy to eat the accused.

The man in question was standing, not sitting, in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. Lupin was dressed in wizard's robes again of a dull, grayish color, and Hermione wondered if Scrimgeour had retrieved them from the theater when he'd gone to try and arrest Lupin the first time.

Don't look at us, wished Hermione desperately to herself. Don't look at us, don't look at me. Do not turn around.

Lupin didn't. Instead, he continued to stare at Scrimgeour, although Hermione thought she saw his hands tense, tightening on each other behind his back.

"You have been accused," Scrimgeour was saying, reading from a scrap of parchment he held in his hand, "of tampering with the minds and memories of muggles, under the pretense of performing fake and harmless magic tricks."

Neville looked at Ginny. This was it, Hermione knew. It was now or never.


	16. Charming

**Chapter Sixteen: Charming**

"Well," snarled Scrimgeour, staring at Neville and Ginny, "what is it? I don't remember saying that this trial was open to the public. Do you have the wrong room?"

"We-!"" said Neville, making a valiant attempt at retort. When he seemed unable to continue the sentence, Ginny stepped in, waving at him to be quiet and let her take care of it.

"Please, Minister," she said, widening her eyes at him in a surprisingly good picture of hopeful innocence, "We needed to bring this to you. It's really important! It's a wolfsbane potion, sir, we found it at the house where Remus Lupin was hiding. If he left all of it there, we knew he didn't' have any on him, and he could get dangerous, sir." She shot Lupin a fearful glance. Lupin continued not to look at her.

"Aren't you…Ginny Potter?" frowned Scrimgeour, glancing from her, to Neville, and back to her again. Hermione held her breath as she thought she saw Scrimgeour turning to look at her, but then she realized that Neville was holding the wolfsbane up directly in front of the place where she was standing, just between himself and Ginny. "You're a friend of this man, are you not?"

"Harry is," replied Ginny, implacably. She shrugged, and Scrimgeour nodded. Hermione pondered the advantages to being in league with a woman whom was known to be unfaithful to her husband. Why should Ginny be expected to share Harry's loyalties, after all? Scrimgeour knew that as well as she herself did.

"Well, bring it here, then," he said, gesturing impatiently for Neville to come forward with the potion. Carefully, balancing it precariously before him, Neville took a few steps forward, and deposited the cauldron on the floor next to Scrimgeour's feet. The witch next to the Minister made a face as the fumes from the potion wafted up to reach her, and she pushed the cauldron a bit away from her with the toe of her boot.

Just as Ginny and Neville had turned to start away from the courtroom, there was a rustling at the back of the group of Ministry wizards, and Blaise Zabini stood up. Hermione watched Ginny stiffen as she saw Blaise coming towards her, and the red-head quickened her steps so that Neville stood between her and her paramour. Although Ginny was put off by his advances, these signs of affection between them seemed to pacify Scrimgeour, who settled back down again, and turned his attention to the still motionless Remus Lupin.

Hermione waited, still in the center of the room, as Neville and Ginny made their way towards the entrance again. She couldn't take her eyes from Lupin, who still had has hands clasped behind his back. As she watched, he took a quick look at the wolfsbane potion, and winced visibly, his shoulders sinking. Surely, thought Hermione, he couldn't possibly think that they'd really just come to turn over the potion and leave. He couldn't' really believe that she'd abandon him to that fate. Could he?

While she'd been waiting, Scrimgeour had passed the list of grievances over to the witch next to him. She began to read from them, taking up where he'd left off in a light, vaguely-accented drawl. "Let's see…you have been accused of impersonating a stage wizard, of potentially revealing magical and Ministry secrets to the muggle public, of exposing full muggle audiences to the dangers of an untamed werewolf…"

Lupin's eyes blazed suddenly. "I would never," he murmured, "be so careless as to forget to take my potion in front of an audience of innocent people."

"And," finished the witch inexorably, "of performing the unforgivable curses, on more than one occasion, in a casual manner and on unsuspecting muggles. Well?" Rolling the parchment up, she tucked it until the pocket of her robes. Hermione caught her breath. "What do you have to say about it? Got anything in defense?"

Apparently he didn't, because he didn't say anything. Instead, he continued to glare at Scrimgeour, apparently still focusing on the accusation of his being irresponsible with his wolfsbane. Out of the periphery of her vision, Hermione saw Neville and Ginny stop in the doorway, and catch the door as it started to close upon them.

"Neville, where's Luna?" she heard Ginny ask. Scrimgeour closed his eyes, as if trying to summon patience from somewhere inside him.

"If you don't mind," he said, implying by his tone that they didn't' have a choice as to whether they minded or not, "we're in the middle of a trial, at the moment. Thank you for your…solicitous contribution. Please leave. Now."

"Yes sir," agreed Ginny brightly, "Right way sir. It's just…."

"Just what?" Scrimgeour was getting more and more annoyed the longer they delayed the verdict. Hermione hoped that Ginny would stop playing the sweetheart and hurry it up, before he dismissed the issue entirely and chose to ignore the whole thing.

"It's just that my friend, the girl that was with us, she's gone missing, and we're just trying to figure out where she's got to," finished Ginny.

Scrimgeour shrugged. "Then go do it quietly, outside of my courtroom. He gestured at the drawling witch to continue with the proceedings, but Ginny cut in yet again, before she'd had the chance.

"I just hope she hasn't wandered into the Department of Mysteries," she said to Neville, very loudly, as the two of them began dutifully to leave the room. "You know how interested Luna is in that place, and she'd get into all kinds of nonsense if she managed to make her way down there unattended."

Hermione watched Scrimgeour fixedly as Ginny and Neville's footsteps retreated from behind her. At first, she thought the Minister was simply going to ignore Ginny's final comment, and indeed, he looked as though he would have liked to. After a moment, however, a man to Scrimgeour's left leaned over, and, grasping his shoulder, whispered something in Scrimgeour's ear. Scrimgeour pushed him away, but the man made another whispered plea, and Scrimgeour let out an exasperated, breathy sigh. "Fine," he said, "Fine, all right, just…just get on with the trial." Turning he summoned Blaise Zabini with a curt gesture, and the former Slytherin hurried forwards to join him.

"Go with the Potter woman, and help her find her stupid friend," he shot. "Make sure no one gets into any trouble, and do it quickly." Blaise hurried past Hermione, and left the courtroom to join Ginny and Neville. Hermione's heart was beating very, very quickly. Scrimgeour had only sent one wizard out to join Ginny? That wasn't nearly enough for her to begin her hostile takeover of the courtroom. She wouldn't ever be able to do it alone if Scrimgeour kept all of his ministers and wizards around him.

"Continue," barked Scrimgeour. "Make your defense, werewolf."

"My name," said Lupin, in the same, controlled voice, "is Remus Lupin, not werewolf. If it weren't for prejudices like yours, I wouldn't have had to resort to the things that I did."

"But you admit that you did them?" asked the witch, quickly.

Lupin shrugged. "Would it do me any good to deny it?"

Hermione stared wildly around her, trying to get her thoughts to calm down. She had to think of something, she had to find a way of distracting their attention long enough that Scrimgeour would decide to send more wizards away. This was all wrong, this wasn't going to come out the way she needed it to. She had to think she had to concentrate.

"You are sentenced, then," said a man from the general area of the Wizengamot seats, "for flagrant abuse of and disrespect for all manner of wizarding laws, to a permanent stay in Azkaban."

Hermione froze. Lupin's head drooped slightly in defeat. Some chairs in the back of the room began to rustle, as people stood to take their leave of the court. There wasn't going to be another opportunity. It was too late.

She whipped her wand arm out from underneath the invisibility cloak, not stopping to care that it revealed most of her left side as she swept it carelessly out of the way. Pointing her wand at the first person in sight, the drawling witch by Scrimgeour's side, she shouted "obliviate!"

Red sparks shot out of the end of Hermione's wand. People shouted, yelled, threw their chairs out of the way. The woman she'd cast the spell on, however, simply went rigid in her chair, and then, relaxing, blinked at Hermione in some confusion, rubbing the place on her head where the spell had struck her. "What's going on? What's all the yelling about?" she said to Scrimgeour.

Several of the ministry wizards, the first to get their bearings, were rushing at Hermione. She counted five of them, and she knew before she'd even finished the count that there was no way she could take on five of them alone. "Obliviate!" she yelled, downing one of them, as another two raised their wands at her. She ducked, rolled out of the way, and two disarming spells shot away to bounce off of nearby walls. One of them hit a tall, stocky wizard in the face, knocking him off balance and depriving him of his wand. Hermione faced her two remaining attackers, poised to fire off another memory spell at one of them, when, out of nowhere, the man she'd been aiming at made a small, startled sound, and fell forward on his face.

Hermione obliviated the final wizard's memory, and, as she did so, Remus Lupin bounded in, reaching down to grab the wand of the wizard that he'd tripped up only moments before. "Obliviate," he said, and the wizard he'd tripped lay on the floor, apparently stunned both by the fall, and by the spell.

As a second wave of older-looking members of the Wizengamot careened towards Lupin and Hermione, Hermione became aware of other spells, firing over her head from just behind her. Luna, Ginny, and Neville were advancing upon the courtroom, screaming "Obliviate! Obliviate! Obliviate!" as they drew closer. Wizards dropped all around Hermione, with innocently puzzled expressions, only to be felled by shouts of "stupefy!" and "petrificus totalus!" from surrounding wizards who were intending to hit Hermione and her friends.

Hermione was aware that Ginny was firing off spell after spell, standing directly next to her. She wondered briefly what had happened to Blaise Zabini, but didn't have long to ponder, as she dove away from the path of a well-aimed disarming spell. Just behind her, Luna had been hit, and was scrambling around on the floor, searching for her wand.

Neville was at her side in an instant, fending off attackers with his outstretched wand while she recovered hers and struggled to her feet. Hermione watched them turn together to attack a tiny, older woman, whose squeaky petrifying spells kept barely missing Hermione's right side.

Much to Hermione's surprise, the tide of the attack seemed to be turning. More and more of the Ministry wizards were falling to the friends' charms, and only a few of the Wizengamot, two Ministry aurors, and Rufus Scrimgeour himself remained. Ginny picked off one of the ministers, but one of the aurors downed Neville with a stunning charm. Hermione and Luna rushed towards him, joined after only a moment by Ginny, so that the three of them could form a protective semicircle around Neville's limp form.

Lupin, having apparently found his stride, picked off two wizards with two rapid-fire memory charms in quick succession. He advanced on Scrimgeour, who was standing, wand raised, where Lupin had been waiting for his sentence only a few minutes before. They spoke at almost the exact same moment, both thundering "obliviate," at each other.

Lupin's charm glanced off of Scrimgeour's shoulder, but bounced up to catch him in the face. He toppled back, shocked and confused, landing on the floor with a thud. Lupin waited. It took Scrimgeour several moments to stand again. When he did, he looked so angry that Hermione was sure that the charm had failed.

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

Hermione breathed a sigh of the most intense relief, as she noticed that the only sounds in the room where confused mutterings, and cries of "Hey, who are all these people?" and "Is this a battle? What side am I on?"

She ran forward, and Lupin dropped the wand that he'd borrowed from the stunned wizard, holding out his arms to receive her. She buried her face in his chest, holding him against her as she tried to take in the amazing knowledge that despite all odds, they'd successfully pulled off a Ministry break-out. Lupin beamed at her, his eyes full of pride, respect, and grateful understanding.

"We'd better leave," he reminded her, "before anyone who's heard the commotion comes in to find out what we've done. If we get out before anyone from outside sees us, none of these here will be able to explain exactly what happened."

"Right." Turning away briskly, Hermione put her wand back into her robes. "Luna, Ginny, I think we can carry Neville. Remus, you should go and get the wolfsbane, it'd be a shame if we left it here after all the work we went through. Let's do that as quickly as we can and get out of this place. With any luck, nobody will remember this in the morning."

Lupin started forward to retrieve the cauldron. Hermione knelt down next to Ginny, and lifted one of Neville's arms. Ginny, however, made no move to assist her. Frowning, Hermione looked pointedly at Ginny, gesturing for her to hurry up and help. "Well," she said, "I can't carry him all by myself, Ginny, come on, now."

Ginny blinked up at Hermione, the blank look in her eyes completely devoid of the passion and concentration she'd been exhibited minutes before. "Sorry," she said, "but what do you want me to do, exactly? Who's this, here? Is he hurt? Oh my…" Glancing down at the wand in her hand, she looked very alarmed. "What've I got this wand for? I didn't hurt him, did I?"

Luna stared at Ginny for several long moments, and then turned her large, terrified eyes up to Hermione's face. "Scrimgeour's obliviation charm," she said simply. Hermione's insides went very cold. Ginny, on the other hand, simply looked more puzzled.

"How'd I get on the floor?" she wondered aloud.


	17. Making Memories of Us

**Author's Note: **Warning: In this chapter, there be…amorousness. Thanks to Keith Urban for the chapter title, but don't tell anyone that I'm a fan. I'm not sure my roommates would speak to me again.

**Chapter Seventeen: Making Memories of Us**

They apparated out of the courtroom one by one, with Hermione hurrying them on to prevent them from being caught there after all. Lupin, holding Ginny, went first. Then came Luna, clutching Neville's arm. Hermione lingered for a moment long enough to retrieve the wolfsbane potion before she, too, disappeared, glad to leave the scene of the crime, that, with luck, they wouldn't ever be remembered to have committed.

When she arrived at the Burrow, there was no one waiting for her in the living room. She could hear Luna's voice upstairs, saying something to Neville about "letting it sink in." Hermione didn't doubt that she knew what "it" was. She climbed the stairs to the second floor landing, and pushed open the door to Mr. and Mrs. Weasleys' bedroom.

Luna and Neville were standing in the very back of the room. Neville still looked stricken, and Luna was running one hand absently through his hair, as the two of them watched the figure lying on the large double bed. Ginny, apparently asleep, was lying there with a completely unconcerned smile on her pretty face. To one side of her stood Molly Weasley, plumping up her pillows and making various other useless, nervous gestures. Arthur was holding her hand, seemingly not able to look his youngest daughter in the face.

To her other side, Harry was perched on one of the kitchen chairs, clasping one of Ginny's hands in both of his. He watched her intently, as if expecting her to wake up and speak to him at any minute. Lupin was holding Harry by the shoulders, but Harry acted totally unaware of the older man's presence behind him.

When Hermione entered the room, everyone but Harry looked up, and Mrs. Weasley hurried forward, anxious, her eyes beseeching. "Are you all right, Hermione, dear?" Hermione nodded. "What…what happened at the Ministry? What's wrong with Ginny?"

Hermione didn't want to open her mouth. She didn't want to say anything, didn't want to break the tableau that she'd walked into. When she seemed unable to find the words, Lupin stepped in, speaking quietly, as if he too was loathe to break Harry's reverie.

"She was hit by an obliviation charm," he said, "from Rufus Scrimgeour. We haven't' assessed the magnitude of the damage yet. Obviously she'll have to be awake for us to do that."

"The magnitude of the damage?" repeated Arthur, as Molly stood, her mouth hanging open, looking back and forth between Lupin and Hermione. "But I thought that all you wanted to do was to erase the Ministry's a memory of your…that is…of the incident in question. Surely, she'll remember….other things."

Lupin shrugged helplessly. "Scrimgeour's charm could have been a lot more powerful than ours were. We all know that he's a very powerful wizard. We'll just have to wait and see."

Molly made a sobbing noise into her husband's shoulder. Neville, detaching himself from Luna's side, walked over and patted her awkwardly on the arm. For some reason, Molly seemed to take some comfort from this, as she immediately reached out and engulfed Neville in a hug that made his eyes bulge with its intensity. "First Bill," she was whispering, her voice quavering, "then Percy, and now Ginny…"

"Ginny's not dead." Harry looked up for the first time, and his fierce eyes met Molly's tearstained ones. She looked away almost instantly, nodding more to the floor than to Harry.

"No, of course she's not," she corrected herself. "But she might not…know her mother anymore. And that's a very hard thing to think about, Harry."

"Yeah," said Harry, "I know."

Hermione hadn't been aware that Lupin had moved away from Harry, and only realized that he was behind her when she heard his low voice in her ear. "Come on," he said, "Let's give them a moment, shall we?" He left the room, and she followed, with Neville and Luna close on her heels.

"I think," said Neville, "that I'm going to make some tea." He started downstairs with Luna, eager to get away from the scene of everyone's grief.

"I could use a drink too," added Hermione tiredly to Lupin as she watched Neville go. "But something a bit stronger than tea."

* * *

While Neville brewed some lemony tea, Luna located a bottle of wine in one of the upper kitchen cabinets. She left it on the table, and retreated into the living room with Neville, helping him to balance the large, magically-steaming teapot as they went. Lupin took the wine bottle, and, selecting a couple of cracked glasses from underneath the sink, he poured one each for himself and Hermione. Hermione sipped hers thoughtfully for a few moments, but Lupin drained his in a single gulp, as if trying to flood his nerves into submission. Hermione refilled his glass.

"Well," asked Lupin, "what's to be done now?"

Hermione shrugged. "Nothing," she informed him. "We're in the clear. No one's ever going to know that we were the ones who sprung you. Most people won't even remember why they were going to lock you up in the first place."

"I didn't mean that," insisted Lupin. "I meant, what's to be done about Ginny?"

Hermione didn't answer, because she didn't know. She thought of Harry and the Weasleys, sitting upstairs next to Ginny's bed, waiting to figure out whether or not their daughter knew their faces when she awoke. Belatedly, it occurred to her that she ought to inform Ron and Charlie, and get them here so that they could help support their mother and father. No doubt Fred and George would be on their way before long. It would be a daunting task, she knew, to explain to the Weasley boys how Ginny had lost her memory. Hadn't Lupin told her that he wanted to prevent her from getting hurt? And even then, it hadn't been her who'd gotten hurt. That at least would have made some sense, would have involved some justice. Ginny, on the other hand…

Lupin was wrapping his scarred fingers around hers, and she returned his comforting squeeze without really thinking about it. The past several days had been nothing but ups and downs, emotional upheavals and invigorating triumphs, so that she couldn't remember what it felt like to have a quiet mind anymore. At least, came the very unwelcome thought, Ginny wasn't worried about anything. She didn't know that there was anything to be worried about.

Lupin put down his wineglass, regarding Hermione thoughtfully over the table. "Don't tell me," she started, "that I shouldn't have come. I don't want to hear it. I know that we-!"

"I wasn't going to do anything of the sort," Lupin murmured. Moving his chair around the table, he drew her towards him, so that her head rested against his shoulder. "You've been incredibly brave, Hermione," he began. "Devoted, attentive, cunning, all of the things that were always your greatest qualities when you were at school. We're all honored to know someone like you, even when you make a mistake." He didn't try to temper that, and Hermione registered that even though he refused to reprimand her, he did see it as a mistake. "But, cleverest witch in the world or not, sometimes you need to look after yourself, too. If you won't, then I will." She relaxed against him, and he kissed the top of her hair, pushing her wineglass out of the way as she reached for the bottle again. "And you've had enough of that, too. We'll both need our wits about us to try and help Harry regain his, no matter how much we might want to drown our sorrows."

That was true, decided Hermione, very true. Lupin was making a lot of sense. She was so relieved that he was making sense for her that she didn't even protest as he gathered her up into his arms, and began to carry her upstairs. She thought they were going back towards Mr. and Mrs. Weasleys' bedroom, but he turned away when they reached that door, and entered one of the upstairs guest-rooms instead, the room that had once belonged to Ginny when she was a girl.

He lay Hermione down on the bed, and then released her, smiling. "Rest, clever girl," he admonished, "get back some of that indomitable strength of yours. I'll see to Molly, Arthur, and Harry."

He started to go, and Hermione sat up in bed, trying to shake off her stupor as she called out to him. "Don't go, Professor…please. Luna and Neville will look after the others. Don't leave me by myself…not right now." She felt selfish even saying it, but Lupin stopped in the doorway, and returned obligingly to her side. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she took some comfort in his nearness, glad to feel his kind eyes fixed on her. She saw plenty of her own confusion, her own exhaustion reflected in his face, but at the same time there was a stoicism about him that buoyed her.

"I thought," he said, smiling very slightly, "that you'd agreed not to call me Professor. It's a bit off-putting, considering our…situation."

Hermione grimaced. "Sorry," she whispered. "I'm working on it."

Lupin chuckled. Hermione tugged on his arm, pulling him towards her, and he slipped on to the bed beside her, wrapping his arms around her waist and letting her move into the bend of his body. She leaned back to kiss him, with what she intended to be a passing affection, but before she'd managed to pull away, she was locked against his lips, more amorous and urgent than she'd known she was capable of being.

She turned over so that she get even closer to him, and they lay there together on top of the covers, Lupin running his hands over Hermione's waist, and through her hair as she closed her eyes and imagined that everything was going to be absolutely all right Everything would be okay, because she'd gotten him back, and for once, finally, there was no danger of him being taken from her again.

Her heart was beating very quickly, too quickly, and she wasn't lethargic anymore. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp on Lupin's robes, and she couldn't quite seem to get enough of a grip on it to undo it. Just as she felt the two pieces slide away from each other, Lupin put out a hand to stop her, gently moving her fingers away from his now bare chest.

"Hermione," he said, forcedly, as if the words pained him to have to say, "I'm the same age as the fathers of your friends. I'm an old man. An old, dangerous, wanted man, at that. I don't know if you really want to…"

"Well, that's okay," Hermione whispered, "because I know that I do. You've got another thing coming, Remus Lupin, if you think that we've gone through everything we have just so that I can second guess myself."

"You've got plenty of time," he insisted, "to decide how you want to spend the rest of your life, and who you want to spend it with. You shouldn't throw it away on men who aren't strong enough, alive enough for someone of your years and your vigor."

Involuntarily, Hermione thought of Harry, of how he was no longer alive enough to satisfy Ginny. Maybe now, Ginny wouldn't notice anymore.

But Lupin wasn't like that, she reminded herself, Lupin had been trying, he'd been doing something with himself. She didn't want to think about him as someone who'd lost himself the way that Harry had. He wasn't like that. She had promised him that he wouldn't ever be again.

"Don't worry," she assured him, "I haven't." Lupin paused a moment, and then finally allowed her to relieve him of his robes, even as she drew off her own.

Sometime later, after she and Lupin had fallen asleep together on the guest bed, Hermione was aware of the door to the room opening slightly. She wondered what she should do, how she would explain to Molly and Arthur the compromising position in which they found their two friends, and in one of their own beds, no less.

But it wasn't Molly, or Arthur, or Neville, or even Luna, she decided. Hermione knew Harry Potter's presence, even when he didn't say anything, or come close enough for her to see him properly. She waited, unsure whether or not to let him know that she was awake, but Harry made no move to approach the bed. He stood for several moments, and then she heard him say, "nox."

The one magical light on the bedside table went out, so that she and Lupin were lying in complete darkness. The door closed gently behind Harry, as he retreated back into the hallway. Maybe, she hoped, even as sleep started to drift back into her mind, Ginny was going to be all right. Maybe Ginny had only been slightly confused, and was going to remember everything that had happened before the assault on the Ministry. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone, just for a little while, could be happy?


	18. Danish and Regret

**Author's Note: **Does anyone know where I could find some Remus/Hermione fanart? Would appreciate it if you could let me know. If you happen to have done any yourself, I'd love to see that, too. :-D

I'd also like to respond to complaints about the implausibility of the…how was it you referred to it? The 'obliviation solution' (that's really kind of neat, I like it.) Anyway, my only response to that is; just because Hermione and Lupin seem to believe for the moment that they've gotten away with it doesn't mean they've actually done so. After all, the only people they've managed to make lose all memory of the crime are the people who were in the courtroom. There were owl messengers sent out the day he went missing, remember? ;) You give me so very little credit! Hardly fair, methinks. Your comments are always, of course, appreciated, and I will correct the bit about lumos/nox. I do hope you keep reading, perhaps I'll have a chance to redeem myself! Worth a shot, is it not?

Best,

Menolly

**Chapter Eighteen: Danish and Regret**

Hermione had hoped that she'd see Harry soon, if only to give her a chance to talk to him about recent events. Somewhat to her disappointment, it wasn't he who brought her breakfast the next morning, but Luna. The blond girl swept in, swaying slightly from side to side under the weight of a tray heaped with gooey-looking pastries and extremely well-done toast. She gave Hermione, and then the still sleeping Lupin a disconcertingly approving look, before depositing the tray on the bed-side table, so carelessly that a couple of pieces of toast fluttered off of it like burnt butterflies.

"Mrs. Weasley's been asking to see you," she said, without preamble. "But she's gone off on an errand or something, so you'll have to speak to her when she comes back. You should get something to eat in the meantime." Nodding at Lupin, she added, "both of you."

Hermione grabbed the tray, and placed it on the floor to prevent it from crashing down off the table by itself. "Mrs. Weasley wants to see me?" Hermione shot a look at Lupin, wondering how exactly she was going to explain herself to the woman, who'd served as her second mother, and whose son she'd dated in the summer after her sixth year at Hogwarts. It certainly wouldn't be a comfortable conversation. Surely, Mrs. Weasley would understand that it was hardly her business.

"Ginny's awake, too, you know." Luna gave Hermione a cryptically significant look, and then turned, and left the room. Hermione's heart sank. Of course, Mrs. Weasley wanted to talk about Ginny. In the course of the previous evening, Hermione had almost forgotten what it was she'd been so depressed about. She remembered it now, and that realization was a bit staggering.

Lupin stirred on the bed next to her, reaching his arms out in front of him in a popping stretch. He blinked, and, rolling over, regarded Hermione, wincing as he discovered that his sleep-tousled hair was caught on one of the pillows. Their eyes met, and, to her surprise, he looked away from her, coughing behind his hand as he said, "Good morning."

"Morning," she replied, motioning to the tray of breakfast below her feet. "Are you hungry? Luna brought us some toast; I think Mrs. Weasley must have made it before she left this morning. I could go downstairs and get you some coffee, too."

"I'll get it myself, thanks," said Lupin, accepting a piece of toast. "How did you sleep?"

"Fine." Hermione felt stupid about that. She'd slept better than she had in a long time, and she certainly shouldn't have. "And…you?"

"Fine," echoed Lupin, a slow smile spreading over his face. "I slept very well. Is that a danish I see hiding next to the toast on the tray?"

They worked through the rest of what they could manage of the breakfast in silence, and Hermione tried not to wonder what was going through Lupin's head. Instead, she turned her mind to the task of deciding what to do about Ginny. Maybe she could go in and speak to Ginny herself, even before Mrs. Weasley came home to question her. She could asses the extent of the damage, and know how to tackle the problem before anyone else.

"I think," she said resolutely, after some consideration, "that I'm going to go in and speak to Ginny. She's awake now."

"I don't know if that's necessarily a good idea." Lupin sounded somewhat wary, and Hermione looked at him. He was frowning, having discarded his Danish mid-bite. "It's a bit jarring to speak to someone who's been obliviated, especially because they don't tend to understand what you're so upset about."

"Yeah, I know," agreed Hermione. "But…I want to see if there's anything I can do, before Mrs. Weasley finds out how bad it is."

"Not much chance of that," shrugged Lupin. He pushed himself forward so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed next to Hermione. "Molly's probably been up with Ginny all morning, trying to force her to talk some sense. No doubt she's already gotten everything out of Ginny that there is to be had. I don't think there's any hope of you heading her off like that."

"Oh," murmured Hermione. "Well. I think I'm just going to go and see Ginny anyway. I'll take this downstairs, too." She picked up the tray, and plucked Lupin's half-finished danish out of his hand, putting it on the tray with everything else. "Back in a little bit."

* * *

Ginny was standing in front of her dresser, regarding herself intently in the full-length mirror. She looked up when she heard Hermione's footsteps, and gave Hermione a very winning smile, which reassured the other girl to no end. Stepping forward, Hermione returned the smile, putting out a hand towards Ginny in a gesture of apology.

"Ginny, I'm so sorry," she began, "I never imagined anything like that was going to happen to you. Do you know me? Do you remember who I am?"

"Oh, sure I know you," replied Ginny. "You're Hermione!" Hermione beamed at her, incredibly relieved. The relief, however, froze into an icy disappointment when Ginny followed that assurance by adding, "Luna Lovegood told me."

"Oh," said Hermione, feeling suddenly very small. "Well, ah. Then, you remember Luna?"

"Not at all," Ginny assured her, with an apologetic, but no less perky smile. "I met a fair few people this morning, and it took a long time for me to get all of the names straight. There was Luna Lovegood, and Neville…Neville something. I remember it was a funny name, but I can't remember exactly what it was. My mum and dad, too, were here, and they told me that _you,"_ and she pointed an accusatory finger at Hermione, "would introduce me to a certain Remus Lupin." Ginny giggled, and gave Hermione a broad, girlish wink, which only succeeded in turning Hermione's insides even further.

"What about Harry?" Hermione persisted.

Ginny shrugged. "No," she replied, "I'm afraid not. I mean, of course I've heard all about him, but he hasn't been in to see me yet. They tell me that it might be a bit hard on him." For the first time, she frowned, looking a bit wistful. "I imagine that's probably true…but it's hardly my fault. He can't possibly blame me for the mix-up."

No, agreed Hermione, although not out loud. No, Harry couldn't possibly blame Ginny for what had happened. He could very easily blame Hermione. "Of course not," she said, speaking around her thoughts. "No, I'm sure that he'll come around soon enough."

She left Ginny standing there, not caring how disconcerting the red-head might find her abrupt departure. Hermione wanted to find Harry. She hoped that he was still in the house, although the more she thought about it, the more she doubted that he'd waited around to let everyone else express how sorry they were for him. She knew he'd been in last night, when he'd come to check up on Hermione and Lupin. Maybe he was just still sleeping, and hadn't had a chance to see Ginny yet.

* * *

Of course, Harry wasn't sleeping. She found him sitting on the living room sofa, Hedwig perched in his lap. He was stroking the owls snowy wings down against her back, over and over again, in almost nervous gestures that Hedwig clearly found a bit abrasive. As Hermione entered, Hedwig gave Harry a reproachful look, and then took flight, winging out the window and around the corner out of sight. Harry watched her go, his face completely blank. He didn't look up when Hermione stopped behind him.

Unable to find the words to begin a conversation, Hermione stood by the edge of the sofa for several minutes, before deciding that maybe it would be best to forget about talking to Harry entirely. Before she had a chance to turn and run, however, Harry spoke, apparently having known she was there for the last several minutes. "You know, Hermione," he began slowly, "When you left the other night, I felt really guilty about it. I thought that I'd let you down, that I was wrong to be so much of a coward that I couldn't get up and join you, be your hero, like you said." The way he said the word 'hero' was so full of disdain that Hermione winced. "But now, today," continued Harry, "I look around and I realize that I was absolutely right. No good could possibly have come from interfering in the situation at the Ministry. I'm not useless. You're just reckless, after all."

With that, he stood up, and stalked right past Hermione, not stopping to look at her as he crossed out of the living room to the stairwell. Hermione wanted to cry.

She heard Harry run into Neville on the stairs. Apparently, the two of them exchanged rather unpleasant words, because only seconds later, Neville came tearing into the living room, looking very glad to be out of harm's way. He smiled ruefully at Hermione, but she simply nodded at him, not really interested in what he would no doubt have to say about Harry's mood. She was briefly glad that Luna hadn't come down to join them, as Luna's glib, confident, sometimes thoughtless manner would no doubt irritate Harry even further, and Hermione didn't want to sit through a shouting match.

"We're going to go home today," Neville was saying. "I mean, we'll still be just a pinch of floo powder away if you guys need anything, of course."

"Oh?" Hermione thought about that for a moment. "Well, I'm sure Harry, Ginny, Molly and Arthur will be…very glad to know that you're in easy access. It'll probably be hard for them the next few weeks." Secretly, she thought it would be very hard for them for much longer than that.

"It'll be a lot easier," insisted Neville, "with you and Remus around."

"Me and Remus around?" She shook her head. "No, I don't' think were going to be staying. Remus and I have places to go too, and now that everything's all settled down again, I think I'll take him back home. There's a lot for us to discuss, and I'm in the middle of writing a book."

Neville looked startled, and then somewhat crestfallen, but Hermione paid him no notice. The more she thought about going home with Lupin, and of getting back to her normal, everyday life, the more appealing the idea became. Now that she wasn't on the run, nothing was stopping her from continuing her work on Muggles and Magic, What's the Appeal? Lupin might even be willing to help her, as he had tons of first hand experience with the subject.

"And, after all," she added, trying to sound casual, and ended up sounding very morose indeed, "Harry wont' want us lurking around here for much longer."

She and Lupin didn't leave that day, nor did they leave the next, however. As eager as Hermione was to get away from Harry's baleful, accusing eyes, and Ginny's vapid, confused queries, Lupin seemed very reluctant, and she was loathe to force him to move again, after they'd been running here and there for so long. He and Harry spent a great deal of time locked up together in the study, although every time that Lupin emerged from the room, he looked a little bit more haggard and emotionally beaten than he had when he'd gone in. Hermione wanted to have words with Harry about his treatment of the older man, but, to be honest, she didn't have the nerve.

The only person in the house who seemed to be completely happy was Ginny. With a zest for household chores that Hermione had never before seen in the girl, Ginny set about helping her mother with cooking and magical mending in a very dutiful way. Everything seemed new and exciting to her, as in fact, Hermione reminded herself, it really was. The only time that Ginny seemed completely at a loss was when she ran into Harry.

At first, Ginny had tried to be gentle with him, had even slept in the same room with him in an attempt to repair what she decided was their 'wedded bliss.' Hermione had hoped that it work, but Harry was so revolted by the idea of sleeping with someone who couldn't remember him that he'd insisted on staying in Fred and George's old bedroom, and seeing as little of Ginny as was humanly possible. Every time he did run into her, an odd look came over his face, like across between longing and loathing, and he left the room without more than a nod to anyone in it.

"Well," muttered Ginny huffily to Hermione, two mornings after they'd returned from the Ministry, "it's not as if I'm not making an effort. Come to think of it, I seem to be the only one who is!"

Although he grudgingly entertained Lupin's attempts at conversation, Harry flat-out refused to speak to Hermione at all. Everyone in the house avoided mentioning the subject of Harry and Hermione's school days, as if that was something that was so far in the past that it was painful even to think about. The longer they stayed in that once pleasant house, the more Hermione felt as though she was suffocating.

She was very glad, therefore, when, on the morning of the third day, Lupin sat down next to her on the bed they'd adopted as their own, and took her hand in his. "I think," he said, "that it's time for us to leave Molly and Arthur to learn how to cope with Ginny on their own. She's certainly pleasant and obedient enough for it to be less of a problem than we anticipated."

Hermione met his eyes, and gave him a look that said very clearly what she was thinking. Ginny's obedience and sweetness was hardly going to be the source of the problem, and yet it didn't' make the situation any more agreeable for any of them.


End file.
